Chapter Twenty-six
B reath still misted a little in the air, but the sun was warm on her skin. The air was sharply fresh as it never was in summer. Geneva inhaled, trying to clear her mind of madness. The cause of her madness fell into step beside her.
“Running away? Were nine kisses too much for you? Do you want to end the game?”
“I will end the game if you agree to support…that child.” Diplomatically, she avoided saying “your child.”
When he didn’t reply, she glanced at him “Why not? I know you already support other bastards.”
“Who the devil told you that?”
“Does it matter?”
“Probably not. I can’t take responsibility for Molly Carew’s child.”
She stopped to confront him. “Why not?”
She saw anger flare. “Because to do so would be seen as an admission that Molly was telling the truth. That the child is mine. And he is not.”
“How can you possibly be sure?”
“I have no intention of explaining myself to you, Miss Smith. You must simply take my word.”
If the thought wasn’t ridiculous, she’d want to shake him. “You needn’t protect my innocence. I know the ways men seek to avoid fathering a child.”
At his look of shock, she wished the words unsaid, but why did the world insist that unmarried meant abysmally ignorant?
“How?” he asked.
She turned and marched on. “I have no intention of explaining myself to you, my lord. You must simply take my word that I am not a ruined woman.”
He fell into step beside her. “I said nothing about ruin. If you’re not a maiden, Genova, the next few days could be a great deal more interesting, and you must know it.”
“Must?”
“I pay no forfeit for that, but you, on the other hand, do.”
He stopped her, kissed his own gloved fingers then brushed them across her lips. “Seven owed,” he said.
How could that touch be as devastating as a passionate embrace?
Genova turned and hurried on. She’d given him a wrong impression and now felt as if armor had been stripped away. Heaven knows what he’d do next, or how she’d respond.
“It’s quite enlivening to be thought a wicked woman,” she said to correct things, “when I’ve spent my life enshrined in virtue.”
“A saint doesn’t kiss as you do, Genova.”
“Not even if married?”
“You’re a widow?”
She heard shock and was tempted to let him think that. It wouldn’t do. “I was engaged to marry.”
He stopped her again, gently, looking truly compassionate. “He died?”
She turned her head away, staring blindly at a gnarled and leafless tree. Look what she’d done now. She didn’t want to talk about Walsingham.
“He lives. I broke it off.” Then the words tumbled out. “And thus I broke his heart. You see what a wicked woman I am.” She had never before admitted the shame she felt at having treated Walsingham so cruelly.
“Why did you end it?”
Why couldn’t she rebuff his quiet question?
“Because I didn’t love him,” she said with a sigh.
“Because I believed that marriage should be made for love.”
“Believed?”
“Believe,” she corrected, compelled to turn and face him, because she did still believe, despite everything.
“Remarkable. I suppose your parents were idyllically besotted.”
She raised her chin at his tone. “They were in love. It’s not so unusual a situation.”
“No?”
“Lord Rothgar and Lady Arradale are in love.”
She expected flippancy, but he said, “Perhaps.”
“And Lord and Lady Bryght.”
“And I would have thought him as cynical a bastard as I am. I grant you your point. The same goes for Walgrave as best I can tell, and he and I used to hunt in the same pack.”
“And consider Thalia. In love after sixty years.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“You can doubt that?”
“Doesn’t love have to be tested by reality and time, or else isn’t it only a dream?”
She blinked at him. “You’re right.”
“I am, occasionally. And for the most part, love fails under the test.”
“You’re not right about that. I gather your parents were not devoted.”
“Oh, intensely, but not to each other.” He tucked her hand in the crook of his arm, and they headed toward the others, who were now a dangerous distance ahead.
“My father was devoted to wine and dice—an unfortunate combination, you must admit. My mother loved another but was compelled to marry my father. Upon his death, she married her true love and moved abroad.”
“A sorry tale, but she did love.”
“But pity the poor child who perhaps hoped he was loved, too.” He stopped. “Though devil alone knows why it should matter. I hardly ever saw her before my father died.”
A loud crash rocked the earth beneath their feet.
“Alack and alas,” he said, “they’ve conquered the Yule log without my vigor. Will the house of Rothgar fall with an equally earth-shaking crack? Come, before we miss the drama.”
He grabbed her gloved hand and pulled her toward the trees at a run. She picked up her skirts and went, still dazed by his words. They were true, painful, and perhaps words he had never spoken to another.
He probably wished them unsaid, but for all those reasons and many others, Genova was storing them in her heart and her mind like a precious treasure.
They ran into the woodland and she almost tripped on a branch. He put an arm around her, sweeping her along, up over a rotting boll, down under a low branch.
“Stop!” she cried, gasping.
He swept her into his arms and carried her. “What have you been doing with your vigor, Genova, my sweet?”
She laughed into his shoulder, still having to suck in breaths. It was that or cry. It was as if the earth had cracked and they’d fallen into another, deeper world.
His wicked earring twinkled before her eyes. His fine jaw, slightly darkened, was close enough to touch, close enough to kiss. His smell could already make her head swim.
He looked down at her, then stilled, reflecting, surely, her bewildered thoughts. The world receded and Genova trembled, with fear as much as anything. She did not want to feel like this. Not about this man. Not when nothing connected them but artificial threads.
But was that true?
He looked away and strode forward.
“At last!”
Genova turned her head and saw they’d entered a clearing where everyone was observing them with an amused expression. Except Damaris Myddleton, of course.
It had been Lord Rothgar who’d spoken. To Genova’s astonishment, he was stripped down to his waistcoat and shirtsleeves, and his wife was playing the servant by carrying his outer clothes.
Some other men were in the same casual state, and other women were loaded with clothing. Despite the crisp air, some of the men had taken off their cravats, as well, so that their shirts stood open. One had rolled up his shirtsleeves.
The gentlemen were playing woodsmen for the day. The real woodsmen, fully dressed in rougher clothing and heavy boots, observed the games with good humor. It would be a treat for them to have the lords doing the work.
A tree trunk two or more feet in diameter lay across the space. It was cut roughly at one end, but more neatly at the other, and without side branches. Even Genova’s inexpert eye could tell that this tree was long dead and had been carefully prepared for the ceremonial felling.
Ash slid Genova to her feet in a way that caused a ripple of shock, and not just in her. She pushed him away in reproof, and he fell back farther than she pushed.
Despite his smile, the wolf was back. She knew it was recoil because of what he had revealed, but she frowned at him anyway. It was the only appropriate response.
“I hope you have enough vigor left for the sawing,” Lord Rothgar said, indicating the big two-handed saw. Two guests—Lord Theo Dacre and Mr. Thomas Malloren, Genova thought—picked it up and set to, pushing and pulling the big saw so it bit into the wood.
Ash shrugged out of his coat with a slight air of disdain and held it out to Genova. She took it, resisting a need to snuggle it close and inhale his scent.
“I suspect I can play the maid more easily than you can play the carpenter, my lord.”
“Play the maid?” He unpinned his cravat and unwrapped the length of soft, lace-trimmed cloth. He draped it around Genova’s neck and fixed the jeweled pin through the ends, his fingers brushing against her throat. “I thought you claimed to be pure,” he murmured, his eyes coldly rakish.
She ignored his comment.
“Carpenter is a noble calling, though,” he said. “Even saintly.”
He unfastened the placket of his shirt, then undid his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves, exposing long, strong muscles. It was as if he had her snared. She couldn’t look away from arms, throat, and the chest she could envision all too well.
“I daren’t attempt saintly,” he said, “but I’m adept at noble.”
Genova broke the entrancement and saw Miss Myddleton across the clearing, burdened with Lieutenant Ormsby’s scarlet and watching Ash with a hungry frown. Beware! Genova wanted to call out to her. Beware the wolf who will eat you whole.
When she looked back, Ash was strolling over to the log. One of the men there said something, grinning. Ash laughed and replied in kind.
Genova hugged his jacket to her, fearful that they were laughing at her, though she knew they would not be so coarse. Not where she could hear it, at least.
She struggled to show nothing, wishing she was half the actor he was. Wishing she wasn’t tumbling in love with an impossible man.