Chapter One #2
A safe haven in a sea of insincerity. The Boscastles had committed too many sins themselves to cast judgment. Adrian felt free in their midst to speak his mind, to be himself. They poked fun at pretense, and they were always joking, having one another on. A man could breathe around the Boscastles.
When the young lady rather shyly smiled back at him, he put his hands behind his back and pretended to examine the wedding cake. His gaze lit on the row of candied violets adorning the top tier.
“Comfits,” he said. “I haven’t had a comfit since I was five. My mother used to sneak them to me at Christmas. Afterward she’d pretend the cook had forgotten them again and she would send back to the kitchen for more.”
He glanced around. Then he reached up to pinch one from the cake. A slender white-gloved hand buttoned all the way to the elbow descended upon his wrist like a guillotine.
He grinned playfully. “Sorry. I didn’t know they had your name on them.”
She stepped around the table to show herself. Not that there was a great deal of her to show, but what Adrian observed seemed more than appealing.
Firm breasts like a pair of apples, a nipped-in waist, and the rest looked promising, or what he could see in her gray-green gown with pleated ribbons and deep flounces at the neck, wrists, and hem. She should have wings, he thought. A garden fairy with fast hands.
“They don’t have anyone’s name on them,” she said under her breath. “They’re for decoration.”
“Decoration?” he asked in amusement.
“It’s in the little touches,” she murmured. “The details.”
“Is it?” he said, eyeing her covertly again.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” she said softly, as if comfits were some cryptic code only a certain few could interpret.
He folded his arms across his chest. “I didn’t want to understand the damn things, only to eat them.”
“This is a wedding,” she reminded him, her lips parting in astonishment.
“I know what it is,” he said in a mock whisper. “I guessed the instant I spotted the bride and groom. And now I know that the comfits are yours. I wasn’t really going to take one, by the way.”
“Then why did—oh, never mind.”
“Boys,” he added, guessing what she was thinking. “We’re all the same.”
He lowered his hand obediently, noticing her lips twitch in what might have passed for another smile.
She looked like a Boscastle, with her compelling blue eyes, but most of her siblings had glossy black hair, and hers was a subtle apricot gold drawn into a figure eight on her graceful nape.
Her skin seemed as white, as tempting, as the thick icing on the wedding cake.
He wondered suddenly what she’d look like in the buff with that spun-gold hair twined around her breasts and backside. An angel, perhaps, who incited earthly feelings in this mortal man.
He cleared his throat a little guiltily. “I know what you mean about the details of certain wedding ceremonies,” he said. “I’ve been to jungle kingdoms where human heads are presented as part of the bride’s dowry.”
She looked at him in chagrin. “That isn’t at all what I meant.”
He sighed good-naturedly. “I didn’t think so.”
There was a long pause.
Emma did not react outwardly to his blatant teasing, inured since birth to male provocation.
In fact, this gentleman had a long way to go before he could truly unsettle her, although she really shouldn’t be talking to him at all.
But at least while she did, her students could not make ninnies of themselves over him, and he was in her brothers’ company.
“Isn’t it fortunate,” she asked, challenging him, “that we live in a civilized society?”
“That’s a matter of—”
Fortuitously, at that instant, the soft organ music of the small orchestra resumed its soothing recitation.
Emma could not guess what he’d been about to say and concluded she was the better for her ignorance.
The duke’s heir had closed his eyes, singing to himself in a surprisingly pleasant, low-pitched voice. “‘Lord Jesus Christ—’”
“This is no place for profanity, my lord,” she reprimanded him gently.
His hazel eyes opened in lazy amusement. “‘Lord Jesus Christ, be present now.’ It’s the name of the prelude.”
“Prelude?”
“Bach. The music. Don’t you recognize it?”
“Oh, Bach.” She caught her breath at the delighted grin he gave her.
She thought fleetingly that he didn’t look nearly as frightening in person as the accounts of his past exploits would lead one to expect.
There was no scimitar between his teeth, at least. “I am sorry,” she said at last. “I wasn’t paying attention. ” Not to the music, anyway.
“Think nothing of it.”
She nodded, staring across the room. His gaze stole over her. Emma only noticed this secretive infringement because she could see his reflection in the gilt-candelabra mirror that hung above the mantelpiece.
How embarrassing. She would have recognized Bach if he had not taken her off her guard with his remark about human heads. Her gaze met his in the mirror. Her cheeks flushed with an unseemly warmth.
He smiled again, with an open candor that rendered it impossible for her to ignore him.
It wasn’t appropriate, the headmistress of an academy flirting with a soldier of fortune, family friend or not.
And at a wedding, mind you. It was a good thing her girls had gone into the small ballroom with Charlotte.
If her students hoped to catch Emma in an indiscretion, she trusted she would disappoint them.
She was a widowed viscountess of no great wealth but of a stable, respected place in Society.
She accepted her purpose in life, and not only as the founder of an academy for the edification of London’s young ladies.
As the elder sister of a band of scandal-prone siblings, she had offered herself to serve as the moral compass of the clan.
The fact that none of the free-spirited Boscastles bothered to consult a compass and consequently wandered through life willy-nilly could not be attributed to negligence on her part. Emma had fought to save her sibs. Heaven knew how she’d fought.
She took great pains to preserve the family name whilst her family did everything possible to taint it.
Take the tall, recklessly handsome man who kept studying her in the mirror.
Heir to a dukedom notwithstanding, he hardly appeared to be a man with whom a lady should share more than a glancing nod.
And yet there was a playful appeal about him that made her wish she could kick up her heels and indulge in that infamous Boscastle behavior. A few moments of dangerous flirtation, she thought wistfully. She’d married at eighteen, a debutante, and she should have settled into sedate widowhood.
You’re the good girl, Emma, both her parents had praised her before they died. You’re our de
pendable young lady. And her father had dutifully married her off to a dependable Scottish viscount, the cheerful, quiet-spoken Stuart, Lord Lyons, who had never given her a moment of sorrow until his death from blood poisoning several years ago.