Chapter 14
The room inside Isabella’s head, where the parts of herself had been neatly organized, was in chaos. The shelves had collapsed. Everything lay on the floor. Some things were broken beyond repair.
Who am I?
On the outside Isabella knew she looked the same, but on the inside everything had changed. She no longer recognized herself.
She dressed in her slate-blue riding habit with the row of buttons marching militarily down the front, bade Mrs. Westin and Harriet good-bye, and went downstairs.
“Your mount is here, ma’am,” the butler told her, opening the door.
Isabella trod down to the street, where her groom held the mare’s reins.
“Good morning, Burgess,” she said, mechanically.
Hooves clattered on the cobblestones: the Washburnes arriving. Behind them was their groom, picnic hampers strapped to his saddle.
“Nicholas is joining us, too,” Gussie said cheerfully as Isabella placed her foot in her groom’s cupped hands and swung up into the saddle.
“I beg your pardon?” The worry that had blanketed everything like a fog evaporated abruptly.
“Nicholas,” Gussie said, as another horse and rider turned into Clarges Street. “Here he is.”
Major Reynolds sat easily in the saddle, utterly in control of his mount. It took no effort of imagination to imagine him commanding in battle.
Isabella let her gaze drop to his horse; it was easier to look at the beast—huge and glossily gray, with strong haunches and a proud neck—than its rider.
“Good morning!” Gussie said cheerfully as the major halted alongside them.
“Gussie,” he replied. “Lucas.” A brief pause, and then, “Lady Isabella.”
“Good morning, Major Reynolds.”
The major’s eyes met hers. He gave a nod of acknowledgment, but didn’t smile.
No, I don’t feel like smiling either. She looked down at her hands gripping the reins. Blue gloves, to match her blue riding habit.
“Let’s be off,” Gussie said. “What a beautiful day for a picnic!”
* * *
Isabella was heavy with exhaustion, tense with worry, but the fresh air and the exercise helped to clear her mind. By the time the brick walls surrounding Richmond Park were in sight she’d achieved something approaching calmness. She was able to enjoy the vista of grassy slopes, woods, and avenues.
She stole a glance at Major Reynolds. Sunlight fell on his scarred cheek. She saw how distorted the skin was, ridges and plains of melted flesh shining in the sunshine.
Something tightened in her chest. She looked away. Parkland lay before them, scattered with copses of trees. A herd of deer grazed in the distance.
“I have to gallop!” Gussie declared.
“A race?” her husband suggested, a glint in his eyes.
Gussie accepted the challenge.
Isabella declined, shaking her head. Her mood wasn’t light enough for racing. Neither, it appeared, was the major’s. He did, however, play marshal, holding up the white square of his handkerchief. “Ready?”
The handkerchief descended and the horses leapt forward.
When the thunder of hooves had died, Major Reynolds turned to the groom, riding a horse burdened with picnic hampers.
“Do you know King Henry’s mound?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Meet us there.”
The man nodded, touched his heels to the horse’s flanks, and trotted away.
Silence fell. The sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze, the lilt of birdsong, the humming of bees, was suddenly loud. Somewhere a squirrel chittered. A woodpecker hammered its beak against a tree trunk, tat-tat-tat-tat.
The major cleared his throat. “About last night.”
Isabella transferred her gaze from Gussie’s and Lucas’s diminishing figures to his face. His expression was sober, stern even.
The only thing she could think of saying—You promised me it was the punch!—was too much like accusation, so she kept silent.
“I must apologize,” Major Reynolds said, his eyebrows drawing together in a frown. “I hadn’t quite realized how things stood between us. I thought it was the punch, when really...” The frown deepened, becoming a furrow. “The aberration is us.”
Isabella blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s us,” he said, leaning slightly forward in the saddle, as if closing the distance between them could make her understand. “Not the punch or the music or anything else. It’s something between the two of us.”
Isabella looked at the major doubtfully. She liked him, but she didn’t think she loved him. “Love?”
“Oh, no!” Major Reynolds said, lurching backwards in his saddle, his expression so horrified that she almost smiled. “Nothing like that. Just... just something purely physical.”
He means lust.
She should have been appalled. Instead, she was deeply relieved. “So it wouldn’t be like that with other men.”
“No,” Major Reynolds said firmly, and then a doubtful frown creased his brow again. “At least.. . I don’t think so.” He met her eyes. “I’ve never experienced anything like that and I’ve, er...” Faint color rose in his lean, unscarred cheek. “I’ve kissed a number of women.”
I imagine you have, to be so skilled at it. Abruptly, shamefully, Isabella wanted to kiss him again. She wrenched her thoughts in another direction. “So, if I were to kiss another man...” She searched her mind for one. “Lieutenant Mayhew, for example. It wouldn’t be like that?”
“Mayhew has had a lot of practice,” the major said, his voice dry. “I’m sure he’d be good at it.”
“But it wouldn’t be as good as last night.”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
Perhaps I should kiss Lieutenant Mayhew, just to see.
Major Reynolds appeared to have the same thought. His eyes narrowed slightly and he opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it, as if he’d thought better of it.
But Isabella didn’t want to kiss Lieutenant Mayhew, however blond and laughing he was.
She looked at Major Reynolds, a frank scrutiny, taking note of the tanned skin and the startlingly green eyes, the strong bones of his face, the scar.
It was strange how one’s perception of a person could alter so drastically within such a short period of time. Last week she’d seen the major as hard-faced; now she struggled to remember why she’d ever thought that. Stern, yes, until his face relaxed into a smile, but not hard-faced. His mouth was resolute, his eyes disconcertingly clear, piercing almost, but his face was marked by laughter. The creases at his eyes and mouth told of laughter, not anger.
No, that was incorrect. Half his face was marked by laughter. The other half was marked by pain. No smile lines radiated from his left eye or bracketed the left side of his mouth. The skin there was smooth, pink, burned.
Maybe that was why she’d thought him hard-faced? When she saw his face, his whole face, with the scar so prominent, all she saw was pain. It gave a false impression of who he was—pain, hardness—instead of a man ready to laugh.
Except that she hardly noticed the scar now.
I should learn to see it as he does. Major Reynolds didn’t see pain when he looked in the mirror; he saw how lucky he was.
Isabella’s gaze drifted to his mouth. Memory of his lips on hers, of his hands on her skin, brought a flush of heat to her body. I want to kiss him again.
She had a label for that sensation now: lust.
That’s what it was. Lust. An aberration between the two of them.
The relief she felt was almost exhilaration. The room in her head was no longer in chaos. Almost everything was back on the shelves again. Some things still lay on the floor, too broken to fix. Her ignorance, her innocence—whatever one wished to call it—was one of them.
I am still a virgin, but my body knows how to crave physical pleasure.
Shocking, yes, but far better than the alternative: that her brain was addled, that she had somehow fallen in love with Major Reynolds.
She was herself again, only slightly altered. The sun was shining and the birds were singing and everything was in its place again in the world, in her world.
Elation bubbled up inside her. “Shall we race?” She narrowed her eyes against the sun, searching for Gussie and Lucas. They were tiny figures on the hillside.
“By all means.” Major Reynolds brought his horse alongside her and flashed a grin. Had he caught her mood? Her exhilaration and relief?
Isabella grinned back at him. Only lust. Nothing as terrible as love. Nothing I can’t cope with.
* * *
They were both flushed and laughing, panting, by the time they pulled up. Lady Isabella’s mount, a lively blood-bay named Firefly, had proved almost as swift as Douro.
“Congratulations, Major,” she said, laughing, catching her breath. “You won!”
“Not by much.”
Gussie and Lucas were no longer beneath the clump of trees. Nicholas glanced around, searching for them. They were further down the avenue, their horses ambling side by side.
Nicholas nudged Douro with his knee, bringing himself and the horse around to face Lady Isabella.
“I wish I could have brought Rufus,” she said. “He would love this.”
“Then let us bring him,” Nicholas said. They were so close that their legs almost brushed. “And Tam, too. And Timothy and Grace. A barouche filled with dogs and children.”
“A splendid idea, Major.”
“But no kittens,” he added.
Lady Isabella made a moue of disappointment. “Don’t you think kittens would add a charming element of chaos to the expedition?”
Her eyes laughed at him and the temptation was suddenly and quite simply too great. Nicholas leaned over and kissed that teasing mouth.
Her hesitation lasted a mere fraction of a second, and then Lady Isabella kissed him back.
Nicholas deepened the kiss, savoring the softness of her lips, the exciting heat of her mouth. Arousal flared in his belly. He could lose himself in this, in the heat, the exquisite pleasure, the—
We’re in Richmond Park.
With a muttered oath he tore his mouth from hers. At the jerk of his hand, Douro stepped back a pace.
He stared at her, steadying his breathing. She looked as she had last night—dark eyes, flushed cheeks, well-kissed mouth—but not aghast, not dismayed.
“Lady Isabella—”
“Isabella.” Her mouth quirked up at one corner in a wry smile. “If we’re to do that, then I think we shouldn’t be so formal with each other.”
Her words made hope rise swiftly in his chest. We’ll do it again, she seemed to be saying.
But not here. Not where we can be seen.
Nicholas cleared his throat. “Very well, Isabella, ... I think we’d best find Gussie and Lucas.”
“Yes.” The wry smile vanished. “We had better.” She gathered her reins.
Part of him was disappointed. Had he wanted her to protest? To kiss him again?
Yes, he had. But Lady Isabella—Isabella—knew as well as he did what would happen if they were seen kissing in public. They would have to marry. And as much as he enjoyed her company—and her kisses—she was not the bride he wanted.
His thoughts swerved to Clarissa Whedon, the bride he did wish for. She was no beauty, but it was her mildness, her youth, that recommended her to him. She would suit him in ways Lady Isabella never would.
And vice versa,whispered a sly voice in his mind.
Nicholas shook his head, banishing the voice. He pressed his knees against Douro’s warm flanks and encouraged the horse into a trot. Clarissa Whedon, he would marry; Isabella Knox, he would kiss.
But he couldn’t kiss Lady Isabella if he was engaged to another woman.
Douro lengthened his stride into a canter. Lady Isabella kept pace beside them.
Nicholas glanced at her. He would put off his proposal to Miss Whedon for another week. Or two.
* * *
They ate their picnic on King Henry’s mound, looking across London to the dome of St. Paul’s. No opportunity arose to kiss Lady Isabella again. “Almack’s tonight?” Nicholas asked her as they left the green expanse of Richmond, enclosed in its brick wall, behind them.
She shook her head. “The Peverills’ musicale. My cousin particularly desires to attend.”
A musicale. Nicholas managed—barely—not to grimace. Almack’s, with its débutantes and its dowagers, its dry cake and tepid lemonade, was almost more appealing. Almost. “Would you and your cousin like an escort?” he asked.
Isabella glanced at him from beneath her lashes. He thought she suppressed a grin. “We would be delighted,” she said demurely.
Several hours later, lounging in a lattice-work Chippendale chair, Nicholas found himself regretting his offer. The musicians were superb, the supper superior to anything Almack’s could offer, but neither the performance and nor the intervals had offered the opportunity for a private word—much less anything else—with Lady Isabella.
He cast a glance around the ballroom. The guests were predominantly female, and predominantly gray-haired. With a sigh he focused his attention on the musicians again: two violinists and a pianist. The pianist was extraordinarily animated. He played with his entire body. His face changed with the mood of the music: dreamy, his eyes half-lidded; exultant, his eyes wide and his mouth open; fierce, a frown furrowing his brow and his lips drawn back from his teeth; melancholy, his mouth pulling down at the corners and his shoulders sagging.
A final trembling chord filled the ballroom. The violinists laid down their bows. The pianist bowed his head.
There was a moment of silence, as if the audience held its collective breath, and then the sound of clapping swelled into the silence. The applause grew until the ceiling seemed to resonate with it. “Excellent,” said Mrs. Westin, seated between him and Isabella, as the musicians stood and bowed. “Simply excellent!”
They rose, in the clamor of conversation around them.
“Magnificent—”
“—the finger-work—”
“—such expression!”
They lingered after the crush of guests had thinned, being invited, on the strength of Mrs. Westin’s friendship with Mrs. Peverill, to partake of further refreshments in one of the smaller saloons.
Mrs. Westin, almost as animated as the pianist had been, discussed the performance with their hostess. The pianist, when he and his fellow musicians joined the party, was listless and somewhat morose. Or perhaps he was merely exhausted.
From music, Mrs. Peverill and Mrs. Westin moved on to a discussion of china figurines. Nicholas stifled a yawn.
“I have just purchased two more pieces,” Mrs. Peverill said. “Would you like to see them?”
Mrs. Westin expressed great interest. Nicholas stifled another yawn. He swallowed the last of his wine.
“Isabella, will you join us?”
Nicholas snapped alert as Lady Isabella assented. He placed his glass on a convenient table and drifted after the ladies, out the door, along the corridor. Behind him, from the ballroom, came the scrape of wood on wood as the servants cleared the room of a hundred chairs.
The ladies turned into another saloon. Nicholas strolled slowly after them. “Exquisite!” he heard Mrs. Westin say as he paused in the doorway.
The room was undeniably a lady’s parlor, decorated in pink and white. Every surface was covered with figurines. He saw milkmaids and frolicking lambs and goatherds, minstrels and huntresses and harlequins, bright-eyed squirrels and coquettish ponies.
Nicholas blenched slightly.
Mrs. Peverill caught sight of him. “Major! Are you interested in china figurines?”
Lady Isabella glanced up swiftly.
“Er . . .” He stepped into the parlor. “In a small way.”
Lady Isabella bit her lip. She picked up a figurine and began to study it.
“The larger pieces are through here.” Mrs. Peverill walked across to another door. She opened it. Nicholas caught a glimpse of more pink-tinted walls.
Mrs. Westin followed her hostess. Lady Isabella didn’t. She was frowning at the figurine in her hand.
Nicholas stepped closer to her.
“A small interest in china figurines, Major?” Lady Isabella said, still studying the figurine she held. It was a milkmaid with golden curls. “I would never have guessed.”
“Very small,” he said, glancing at the door through which the older ladies had vanished. “Minuscule.”
Lady Isabella returned the milkmaid to its place on the giltwood table. “Minuscule?” she said, turning towards him, a smile on her lips, a smile in her eyes.
“Smaller than minuscule.” He closed the distance between them and reached for her, capturing her face between his hands, bending his head.
Lady Isabella didn’t protest. She leaned towards him. “Be careful,” she whispered.
The kiss was brief and hurried, scorching. They broke apart at the sound of voices from the adjoining room.
Nicholas turned hastily away from Isabella and picked up a figurine. From the corner of his eye he saw the ladies emerge into the parlor. “Oh, do you like that piece, Major?” Mrs. Peverill asked. “It’s one of my favorites.”
He looked down at the figurine. It was a young man in a puce jacket leaning against a tree, a violin held negligently in his hand. “Er. . .” His mind was still caught in the heat of Isabella’s mouth.
He glanced at Lady Isabella. Her face was slightly averted; he saw only her profile, the curve of her cheek, faintly flushed, the soft fullness of her lips. Desire clenched in his belly. He wanted to reach for her, to kiss her again, to not stop.
Nicholas cleared his throat. “Very nice,” he said lamely, and put the figurine down before he could drop it.