Chapter Two
T he hoyden flailed in his arms. “I told you not to call me that,” Maggie seethed.
Michael smiled to himself. He hadn’t meant to use that name again. It was just too easy getting her riled up, and he had to admit, he liked easy. It was so much better than hard.
He tightened his grip, holding her closer to his chest as he traveled the gravel path back to the house, angling his right ear so that he wouldn’t miss her furious griping. “I told you I don’t need any help… I’m perfectly capable of walking… You just can’t help embarrassing me… and I don’t believe for one second that you missed me.”
“But I did!” Michael said.
Maggie turned her nose up to him, regarding him with vicious slits for eyes. He was glad she did. It made admiring the vibrant green more difficult. Maggie had always had beautiful eyes, he remembered—especially when she was yelling at him… which was for most of their childhood. “Then why do you sound so shocked when you say it?” she demanded. “Are you surprised that you missed me?”
Michael trained his gaze forward. “Of course not,” he responded archly. “Why do you always have to read into things? We’re old friends and I told you that I missed you. That’s all. Why can’t you accept the compliment and move on—”
“Oh, it was a compliment, was it?” Maggie crushed her arms across her chest. It was either that or wind them around his neck, and Michael was certain she wasn’t about to do that. Pity. He would love to tease her about it… and see what it felt like.
He shook his head. What an outrageous thought! This was Lady Margaret he was thinking about! Peggy Piggy. The little girl who’d made it her childhood mission to best the boys at every game, every race, every riddle. She was a menace of the first order. And yet… and yet … she didn’t feel like a menace now. She felt soft… and surprisingly delicate.
Michael couldn’t have that. He couldn’t have that at all. At an early age, he’d deduced that the world was so much more palatable when you knew its number. He didn’t appreciate surprises, nor did he value anomalies. He found comfort in things nice and convenient, predictable—especially his women.
He stretched his fingers away from her body, trying not to notice how lithe and curvy it had become since he’d last seen her. How long had it been? Two years? Five?
“Of course it’s a compliment,” Michael said. Wouldn’t any normal woman think so? He forced a nonchalant chuckle. “It’s been a long time. I’d hate for you to think that I’d forgotten you.”
Maggie responded with a glower that would have forced a lesser man to his knees. “I saw you two weeks ago at the Chapman ball.”
“I wasn’t at the Chapman ball.”
Maggie sucked in an irritated breath. “Yes, you were. You didn’t stay, just long enough to steal the first waltz from Lady Wendy.”
Michael searched his memory. “Lady Wendy, huh?”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Stop baiting me! You know you danced with her. I daresay she isn’t the kind of woman that men forget.”
Wasn’t she? Because for the life of Michael, he couldn’t remember dancing with the vapid redhead. If Maggie said he had, then it must be true, but he couldn’t dig up any sort of pertinent detail, although that was most likely because most of his social calendar seemed to blend together as of late. One ball felt the exact same as the other… and the same could be said for his dance partners. He only went to those damnable things to please his mother and because it was expected for an earl’s heir to attend. Pleasure was rarely—if ever—received in the undertaking.
“What are you more upset about,” he replied, “that I danced with Lady Wendy or that I didn’t notice you?”
“Upset? Who said anything about being upset?”
Michael shrugged, causing Maggie to latch on to his lapels. “You sound awfully upset. You don’t have to deny it.”
“I’m not upset!”
“It’s fine.”
“Do you always have to tease?” she asked. “I’m not upset; I’m just worried. I’ve heard men your age begin to lose their memory, I’ve just never actually encountered it before.”
Michael laughed. “Men my age? I’m not much older than you. If I’m getting long in the tooth then so are you, my dear.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Michael sighed. Such a bossy woman! “I can’t call you Peggy, now I can’t call you dear. Pray tell, what am I supposed to call you… goddess… my love?”
Maggie might have turned into a statue for how stiff she became. Dammit. He’d gone too far. A rush of crimson stained her cheeks, and she hastened to look anywhere but at him. Michael told himself that it was for the best. He didn’t need Maggie staring at him, not with those emerald eyes and rosy cheeks. He couldn’t decipher why she wasn’t married yet. Yes, her personality was positively frightening, but she was an attractive woman… a very attractive one. Maybe not in the way that Lady Wendy was—all sweet dimples and shy glances, long lashes and stately bearing—but in a more visceral, earthly way. Less Botticelli’s Birth of Venus , more Rubens’s Battle of the Amazons .
The more Maggie tried to push him away, the more Michael admired the flow of her lips, the way they formed an adorable bow whenever she frowned. The more she tossed her errant caramel locks off her face, the more he imagined them draping long and wild along her shoulders. She didn’t have to bat her lashes to gain attention—she commanded it the second she spoke.
But Maggie wasn’t speaking to him anymore, and Michael desperately wanted to change that. Only his time was up.
He jutted his chin toward the house coming into view. “Most of the wedding guests are ahead. I suppose my fun has ended.” He started to lower Maggie to her feet when she threw her arms around his neck.
“What are you doing?” she exclaimed. “You can’t put me down now!”
Michael attempted to read the panic in her voice but came up short. He lowered her once more, but Maggie’s grip was too strong. “I thought you wanted me to put you down.”
“But they’ve seen me!” she yelped, throwing a hand at the group who were openly staring at the couple. “If you put me down now then they’ll wonder why you were holding me at all when I didn’t need you to. They’ll think we were”—she ducked her head—“you know.”
Michael absolutely loved it when Maggie was out of her element. She was delightfully awkward. “Enjoying each other’s company too much?” he teased.
“Exactly,” she groaned. “So now you must keep carrying me… up to my room. We’ll tell them I sprained my ankle. It will be fine.” Maggie cocked her head, her lips pinching together. “Actually, I shouldn’t worry so much. My friends would never believe that I would be silly enough to enter a compromising situation with the likes of you. They know me better than that, and I’d like to believe they don’t think so little of me.” She tugged at her skirts nervously, making their scene as innocent as possible. “Why aren’t you walking?” she asked. “Please, hurry up and get this over with. I’m embarrassed enough as it is.”
Embarrassed? To be seen with him ? Didn’t the silly woman know that others would kill to be in her position?
Michael bottled his hurt pride and gathered his steps. He let the matter drop, lengthening his stride toward the group with as sanguine an expression as he could muster.
Lady Everly stepped away from the group as Michael got closer. True to form, she was the first to speak up. He had very little experience with the attractive widow, but her reputation was enough to keep Michael at a distance at Society events. “Maggie, what happened?” she asked, hurrying to her teammate’s side. With a gimlet eye, she searched Maggie’s entire body before centering an accusing glare at Michael. “What happened to her, my lord ?”
Michael didn’t appreciate what the woman was implying, even if he wasn’t quite sure what it was. But before he could put his indignation into words, Maggie spoke up. “Oh, I was just being foolish. In all the commotion I tripped on a root outside the chapel. I wasn’t paying attention, and Lord Michael was there to help—”
“Rescue. I was there to rescue her,” Michael cut in, enjoying the gasp that Maggie let out before she could stifle it. “I had no idea you were so clumsy, my lady. But you’re incredibly lucky I was there.” He bounced her higher in his arms, grunting from the strain. “Not many men are as strong as I am, you know.”
Michael watched her carefully as she swallowed the fury building in her throat. She wanted to unleash on him—no, she wanted to murder him in front of all her friends. But she couldn’t, and they both knew it.
The words gritted out from between her teeth. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m sure any man here could have done the job.”
Michael bobbled her once more. “Probably not, but let’s agree to disagree, shall we?”
Maggie shut her eyes. “Please just take me to my room. My lord .”
“Gladly.” Michael bowed to the group with a pained, reluctant expression, as if the endeavor was almost too much. “Duty calls.”
They were halfway up the stairs before Maggie found the will to speak. Her voice was calm now, deadly calm.
“I didn’t deserve that,” she said. She flipped a clump of curls off her shoulder, whipping him in the nose.
Michael chuckled. “Oh, yes you did.”
Following Maggie’s curt directions, Michael found her room on the third floor and breezed in, dropping all pretense that carrying her was a hardship. Despite what he’d insinuated to her nosy friends, holding her hadn’t been difficult. Lady Maggie was lighter than she looked—not that she looked big. Rather, her razor-sharp quips and elevated opinion of herself made her appear that way. Maybe that was why Michael’s memories of her made her seem like a giant in petticoats: the woman loomed large in his mind.
Michael didn’t value that reminder.
He sailed toward the bed, plopping her unceremoniously in the middle of the mattress.
“Oof,” Maggie cried. She scurried to sit against the headboard, desperately attempting to claim a semblance of higher ground. She pierced him with a burning poker of a scowl. “I don’t believe for one second that I hurt your feelings back there.”
Michael crossed his arms. He yearned to tear off his fine kid gloves; his palms were unusually sweaty. “I just didn’t know you had such a low opinion of me, that being seen with me would be so… challenging to your faultless reputation.”
“Are you mad?” she exclaimed. “Says the man who teased me for all those years, called me wretched names. What kind of opinion did you think I’d have?”
“I told you, I only called you a name once! Peggy Piggy isn’t the end of the world!”
Maggie punched her fists into the bed, raising herself taller in her seat. “And everyone else did it for the next ten years. You are their leader, the jewel of the ton . You know they follow your every move. Just look at Lord Mason.”
Michael jerked back as if her words had been a whip, fast and liable to rip open his skin with a single lash. “Why are you talking about Lord Mason? I spoke to him yesterday. He’s actually doing quite well, working with Mr. Holmes’s horses, forging a new path for himself, a better one. Or something along those lines.”
Maggie snorted. “No thanks to you.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Michael was alarmed by the force in his voice. People had stopped having the power to rankle him years ago; why was he allowing this foul-tempered woman to do it now?
“It means,” Maggie began slowly, as if addressing a dim-witted child, “that Lord Mason has been a good-for-nothing drunkard for years, spending money he didn’t have, embarrassing his family. Don’t try to argue with me; Lady Ruthie told me all about it. And you were a constant by his side, drinking with him, encouraging his silly antics, oblivious to the hardships you were causing.”
Resentment flared inside him, threatening to boil over. Michael locked his jaw. “I never forced the liquor down his throat. You have a prejudice toward me, believing me to be some devil on his shoulder.”
Maggie chuckled, and it annoyed him more than the know-it-all smirk on her round face. “No, you weren’t a devil. I wouldn’t dare call you one; it might inflate your ego even more.” She placed a small silk pillow on her lap and smoothed her hands over it in a gentle, hypnotic manner that made the harshness of her next words cut even sharper. “But you certainly were no angel. You encouraged his debauched antics; his foolishness was entertainment for you and all your ridiculous friends.”
“What the… How could you?” Michael blustered, his composure completely forgotten. He paced around the room, afraid if he stared at the woman any longer, she would vaporize from his fury. Lady Maggie didn’t know the first thing about him, and yet her opinions were so vehement and obscene. How dare she hold him in such gross regard!
And how dare she accuse him of delighting in his friend’s misfortune. All the men in his sphere were young, drunken fools from time to time. They took turns. It was the way of things in his group—although, now that he thought about it, he rarely let himself get out of control, and Mason had borne the brunt of most of the laughter.
Still… that was in the past. Mason was rebuilding his character, his fortune, and his self-respect. And Michael was damn proud of his friend. In fact, that was why he’d come to the wedding after Mason wrote him about it—to the wilds of Manchester, no less! Mason’s letter had been filled with such excitement and verve and… hope. And when Michael came upon his friend, Mason was just as fresh-faced, clear-eyed, and optimistic in the flesh. Michael had been glad for him, and happy that he’d made the journey to see him, despite losing valuable time training for his next fight.
“You should go.” Maggie’s words sliced through his thoughts.
Michael’s gaze snapped back to her. She sat on her bed, all prim and superior, the unruly, wavy locks that had tickled his nose now safely tucked away behind her ears. Her chin was angled up imperiously, as if Michael were just another servant being sent on his way.
He wouldn’t let her get rid of him so easily. “I’ll wait,” he said, gaining hold of the poise she’d knocked out of him. Michael locked his hands behind his back, directing a casual, lackadaisical smile over her figure.
He reevaluated the situation. Despite his memory of her, Maggie was a small thing. Just an unattached woman, advancing in years, with no marriage prospects on the horizon. She wasn’t one to be argued with; she was one to be pitied. It didn’t matter that her hair reminded him of melted butterscotch or that her face was so perfectly round that Leonardo da Vinci would find no fault in the symmetry. It didn’t matter that the force of her voice and the candor of her words woke something inside of him that had been dormant for as long as he could remember.
Michael was a realist. Their world saw ladies like Maggie in one way, and that was the only one that mattered. But then, why wouldn’t his feet move? Why couldn’t he leave? It wasn’t all about spite.
Michael wanted to be there. For a man who preferred sparring in the ring, he found that he liked it well enough when Lady Maggie did it here.
“I’ll wait until your aunt comes,” he heard himself say, then rolled his eyes at her incredulous expression. “Don’t be nervous. As you remarked, no one would expect anything between us.”
“Of course not,” she scoffed, though Michael could sense her confidence waning. “It’s only…” Maggie inhaled deeply, shaking her head. “My aunt—knowing her, she might be a while.”
Michael wandered around the room, surveying her environment. “She’s playing matchmaker, eh? Giving us all the time in the world to realize we are hopelessly in love with each other?” He chuckled while picking up a silver comb from the bureau, running the sharp prongs against the pad of his thumb. He could hear the embarrassment in her voice.
“You know she is. She says it’s her main priority while I stay with her,” Maggie replied helplessly. “Why else would she ask you to carry me? She knew I had no issue that I couldn’t handle myself.”
“Maybe that was the problem,” Michael replied, returning the comb to rest next to its matching hand mirror. “Anyway, she should have known it would be a losing battle with us.” He finally turned to the bed, flashing her a rakish smile. “We know each other too well for that.”
Maggie continued to fiddle with her pillow, twining loose thread around her long fingers. “I don’t know you at all,” she replied with a shrug.
“Oh, come now. You’ve known me since we were young, which probably means you know me better than most. Our parents were constantly together”—he pursed his lips—“for a time.”
Maggie lifted her gaze from the pillow, settling it on him with a comfortable yet sympathetic air that made Michael regret opening his mouth.
“How… how is your family?”
“Fine,” he answered quickly in his routine, perfunctory way. “And yours?”
“Fine.”
Michael meandered to the bed. “I was sorry to hear that your grandmother died last year. I couldn’t make it to the funeral. As you are with Lady Alice now, I take it your parents are on the Continent again.”
“Where else?” She laughed in an attempt at levity, but bitterness was evident in the two words. Apparently, Michael wasn’t the only person who harbored disappointment in his parents.
“They are a lively couple, are they not?”
“The liveliest.” Maggie smoothed the rancor from her face and angled her head at him. “I see your mother often enough in town but haven’t spoken to your father in ages.”
Michael’s entire body went rigid. He searched her for guile, or a hidden joke, but when he couldn’t find any, he said, “Father prefers the country.”
She nodded as if already knowing what he’d say. “Do you see him?”
“Not much. Hardy ever, actually.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s the way of things. We’re both busy people. I’m actually set to meet him after this. Apparently, he wishes to speak to me about ‘something very important.’”
“Ooh.” Maggie clucked her tongue with a delightful laugh. “That sounds ominous.”
“No doubt it’s about marriage, so yes, it probably will be ominous.”
She narrowed her eyes playfully. “Not ready for the marital yoke? What will the ton say, Lord Michael?”
“You shouldn’t talk,” he quipped, jerking his chin toward her bare hand. “There is no ring on your finger.”
Maggie inspected that finger, as if she wanted to make sure no one had tossed one on her while she wasn’t looking. “And you won’t find one there anytime soon.”
Michael crossed his arms. “And why is that?”
It was her turn to be defensive. “You know why,” she said cagily.
“Afraid a husband won’t let you play cricket?” he teased.
She snorted. So unladylike, but also… almost adorable. What the hell was he thinking? “Among other things,” she said.
“And what if he did?” Michael asked. “What if you were allowed to be married and play cricket?”
He watched as she held the pillow at both ends like she was ready to strangle it. This woman was vicious, not adorable, Michael reminded himself. But that statement felt entirely wrong; it lacked confidence.
“I’m not in the mood for games of what if ,” Maggie said. Michael had only been joking with her aunt in the chapel, but maybe the events of the afternoon had been too much for her. On closer inspection, Maggie had circles under her eyes and her skin was a little pale.
Michael sidled up to the edge of the bed, leaning the front of his legs against the frame. He bent over the mattress until he was inches away from Maggie. It was meant as a lighthearted gesture, nothing to it, but as he came closer, the air became thicker. Maggie’s eyes grew larger. Michael studied the color of her eyelashes. They were a deep-chestnut brown, not butterscotch like her hair. It gave her the appearance of a Frenchwoman, painted and sultry.
When she blinked, Michael remembered himself. “What games are you in the mood for?”
Had he meant to say that? And had he meant to say it so… suggestively?
Christ. Yes.
Maggie studied him for a long minute. He could feel her attempt to read between his words, gauge the seriousness of his question. Michael knew she hadn’t come up with an answer when she replied, “With you? Are you so desperate to lose?”
“I never lose.”
She laughed in his face. “Not when you play others, that’s true, but always when you played me. You could never seem to concentrate.”
And just like that, the atmosphere morphed into something less friendly, more carnal. It was an effort to breathe. Michael bent away from her, standing straight once more. “I was a young boy then—being around any girl was enough to take my concentration away.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m a man.”
“And now that you’re a man, you have more control?”
Michael arched a dark brow, pinning her with an arresting stare that, from experience, made most women weak in the knees. But Maggie wasn’t most women. And she was already sitting. But who knew? Maybe her knees were trembling under her skirts; he just couldn’t see them. Just as Michael’s response was a lie, he would make sure she never knew it.
“Absolutely.”