Chapter 20 #2
She did not run the way a young lady of the ton ran. At fourteen, she had been told by a particularly disapproving governess that a lady never ran. She had nodded gravely. And on every occasion in the eleven years since, she had run anyway.
She ran now.
She lifted her skirts with both hands and ran across the meadow in a slanting course that took her not toward her arrow but past her arrow and toward the lake. Behind her, she distantly heard Cassian’s deep voice say, “Alice,” in a tone of slowly dawning comprehension.
She kept running.
She reached the willow at the lake’s edge, bent, and picked up her arrow. She did not stop. She ran the four paces to the small wooden landing.
She arrived at the landing at the same time as Cassian, who had crossed the meadow from the foot of the orchard on the other side. He had grabbed her by the wrist before she could complete the turn.
“Alice.”
“Your Grace.”
“What exactly are you doing?”
“I am winning, Your Grace.”
“You are not winning. Your arrow is in your hand. You are required to return to the starting point.”
“I am required to return faster than you.”
“Yes.”
“Then I shall require that you take longer than I do.”
She turned in his light grip with a bright laugh. She had decided, in the fast calculation of the last six seconds, on a very particular form of cheating. So with her free hand, she snatched the arrow he was holding and threw it into the lake.
It made a small, clean, satisfying splash, six feet out in perhaps two feet of water, and floated.
It floated very visibly on the still bright surface of the lake in the precise spot where any man wishing to retrieve it would be required to walk in and get it.
Cassian looked at the lake. Then looked at her. Then looked back at the lake. “Alice.”
“Your Grace.”
“That is my arrow.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“In the lake.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
He looked at her for a moment longer. Then he picked her up.
She did not, until the moment he had her off her feet, understand what he was doing.
He had wrapped both hands around her waist, lifted her with an easy, thoughtless strength, and carried her, kicking and laughing the loud unselfconscious laugh she had been laughing in drawing rooms across London for twenty-five years and would be laughing in his house for many more, the four paces across the wooden landing and the two more paces off the end of it into the shallow water.
She landed in perhaps twelve inches of water on her fee, in a bright shock of cold that climbed from her ankles to the back of her neck in a single instant.
Cassian was standing in the water at her elbow, still holding her. He was perfectly dry above the knees.
“You—”
“You threw my arrow in the lake, Alice.”
“That is no reason—”
“It is every reason.”
“My dress, Your Grace—”
“Your dress is wet at the hem, Alice. It will dry. Mine is also wet at the hem. We will be dry by nuncheon. In the meantime, I have your wrist, and I have your arrow, and I have you in my lake which is the only place at this house party where the seven dozen people on the lawn cannot hear what we are saying. Now.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
He turned her in the shallow water by the wrist.
The willow hung over the lake by the landing. Its long pale green fronds came down to perhaps eight inches above the water, and the small landing stood between them and the lawn.
The lawn, at present, was fully occupied by Lord Greencliff, who loudly declared that since both the bride and the groom were now in the water, the contest was, in his impartial professional judgment, postponed pending the dryness of the main contestants.
The lawn laughed. The lawn applauded. The lawn turned its attention back to the next pair of arrows.
Meanwhile, Alice and Cassian remained hidden.
He bent his head to her. “Alice.”
“Cassian.”
“This.”
“This?”
“We could have this.”
Alice did not answer at first.
She did not answer because what was on his face was not the dry, amused look he had been wearing on the meadow. It was the look he had worn in the orangery. It was the look he had worn while holding himself in check in Mrs. Hatcher’s back room.
On the small wooden landing at his own lake with his bride standing in twelve inches of water and her arrow in her hand and her hair coming down on one side, he was no longer holding himself in check.
He went down.
He went down on one knee in the water in his good Hessian boots, in front of his bride. The water almost reached the top of his calf. The willow’s pale fronds shifted slightly in the gentle midday wind.
He did not propose, for he already had. What was happening in the water was not in any sense that kind of proposal.
With both hands, he lifted the wet hem of her morning skirt and gently kissed the soft inside of her thigh, just on the spot above her knee where she had felt his hand four days ago in the orangery and had not since recovered.
She did not breathe.
In fact, she did not breathe for the entire duration of the kiss.
It was a warm, slow kiss. He held it for the length of three held breaths, and she felt his mouth on the bare skin above her stocking the way she had felt his finger on it in the orangery: like a shock that spread up her thigh through her chest to the tender spot at the side of her neck.
He kissed her there once more with a deliberate small pressure and lifted his head.
Then he stood.
He set her skirts down, took her arrow from her hand, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat.
He regarded her for one long second with the dark, possessive look that had been on his face under the willow and said very quietly, “We could have this, Alice. All of it. The lake. The orchard. The lawn full of people who are about to come back and ask us why we are still wet at nuncheon. The bride who cheats at archery in her husband’s meadow because she would rather win than be dignified.
The husband who lets her. All of it. The whole of it. Every day.”
“Cassian…”
“Think on it.”
Alice drew in a breath. Then she tried, with the steady composure she usually mustered for difficult things, to let it out only for it to come out not the way she had meant it to.
It came out laughing. It came out laughing because she did not know what else to do with what she was being offered.
She put her free hand to her mouth. “You mean,” she said against her glove, “you and me in your meadow.”
“Yes.”
“And me beating you in archery.”
“You cannot beat me, Alice.”
“Can’t I?”
“You cannot. You have been told by Lord Greencliff himself that the lady most ready to laugh will perform best, and I will now confess to you that I was the one who told Lord Greencliff to say that because it has been true of you since the day I met you, and I had hoped to use it against you.”
“That is not fair.”
“It is entirely fair, Alice.”
“Your Grace?”
“Yes.”
“I shall race you back.”
She did not wait for his answer. She hiked up her wet skirts with both hands and ran.
She ran along the small landing, up onto the gravel, across the meadow, and toward the far end where Joanna stood with a shawl. Behind her, she could hear very clearly the steady tread of Cassian walking, not running.
He let her win.
He let her win the way a man let a woman he had decided was his win a small, unimportant race in his own meadow on a Wednesday morning in May with no particular hurry about it.
Alice reached Joanna and the shawl perhaps thirty seconds ahead of him. “I have won, Joanna.”
“You are also drenched, Alice.”
“Yes.”
“You are drenched, and my brother, who is approximately thirty paces behind you, is also drenched. And there is a small, entirely unnecessary smile on his face which has not been there in approximately fifteen years. I shall pretend not to have noticed.” Joanna put the shawl around Alice’s shoulders.
Cassian joined them a moment later. He was wet to the knee and only the knee, as though he had gone into the lake exactly as far as he had meant to and no farther.
He greeted Joanna with a small, easy bow. Lord Greencliff, who had walked up from his judging post with his cane under his arm, observed both of them with a very particular, measuring one-eyed attention.
“Lady Alice.”
“My Lord.”
“You have won.”
“I have, My Lord.”
“Through a great deal of cheating.”
“Through a moderate amount of cheating, My Lord.”
“Lady Alice.”
“Yes, My Lord.”
“Young people in love,” Lord Greencliff said very gravely to Joanna, who was standing beside him, “have two settings. They are either very quiet or they are wet to the knee. There is nothing in between. I have been observing this for forty years, and I have not yet found the exception.”
Joanna laughed.
Alice felt her face flush.
“My Lord,” Cassian interjected.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“That was not boxing advice.”
“No, Your Grace. It was, however, advice. I shall give a great deal more of it this evening. Lady Joanna has organized a game of whist in the long drawing room after dinner with careful forfeits for the losers, and I have agreed to be the impartial judge of the forfeits which I have already determined will be undignified. I hope you will attend, Lady Alice.”
“I will, My Lord.”
“Very good, My Lady.”
Lord Greencliff bowed. He had decided, in the last quarter of an hour, that he approved of his pupil’s bride.
Then he turned and walked back toward the house.
Alice did not speak again for an hour.