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‘I’m afraid you will have to make do with my clumsy efforts tonight,’ he said. Then reached up and twined a curl round one finger. ‘Though it seems a kind of sacrilege to confine all this russet glory in braids.’
‘Russet glory!’ She snorted derisively. ‘I never took you for a weaver of fustian.’
‘I am not. Not a weaver of anything.’ He leaned back on his heels. His eyes seemed to be glazed. ‘But surely you know that your hair is glorious?’
The look in his eyes made her breath hitch in her throat. Made her heart skip and dance and her tummy clench as though she was flying high on a garden swing.
Oh, Lord, but she wanted him to kiss her. Out of all the men who’d paid court to her—or rather to her money—none had ever made her want to throw propriety to the winds. And he hadn’t even been paying court to her. He’d been alternately grumpy and insulting and dictatorial all day. And yet... She sighed. He’d also rescued her from an ostler and a group of bucks, forgiven her for pushing him out of his gig and throwing a rock at him. Even made a clumsy sort of jest of the rock-throwing thing.
A smile tugged at her lips as she thought of that moment.
‘So you accept the compliment now?’
‘What? What compliment?’
‘The one I made about your hair,’ he breathed, raising the hank that he’d wound round his hand to his face and inhaling deeply.
‘My hair?’
Why was he so obsessed with her hair? It must look dreadful, rioting all down her back and all over her face. A visible reminder of her ‘wayward nature’, Aunt Charity had always said. It was why she had to plait it, and smooth it, and keep it hidden away.
He looked at her sharply. ‘If not that, then why were you smiling in that particular way?’
‘I didn’t know I was smiling in any particular way. And for your information I was thinking of something else entirely.’
‘Oh?’ His face sort of closed up. He let her hair fall from his fingers and bent to dab at her feet again.
Good heavens, she’d offended him. Who’d have thought that a man who looked so tough could have such delicate sensibilities? But then she hadn’t been very tactful, had she? To tell him she’d been thinking of something else when he’d been trying to pay her compliments.
‘I was thinking,’ she said hastily, in an effort to make amends, ‘of how funny you were, searching about for rocks for me to throw.’
He shrugged one shoulder, but didn’t raise his head.
‘How very forbearing you have been, considering the abuse you’ve suffered on my account.’
He laid her feet down gently in the hay. ‘That is all I can do for them for now,’ he said, and scooted back. Looked at his hands. Cleared his throat. Scooted another foot away.
Which was both a good thing and a bad. Good in that he was determined to prevent another scene from developing in which their mouths ended up scant inches apart. Bad in that... Well, in that he was determined to prevent another scene from developing in which they would be tempted to kiss.
No, no, it was a good thing he wasn’t the kind of man to attempt to take advantage of the situation. They were going to have to spend the night together in this barn, after all. And if they started kissing, who knew how it would end?
Yes, it was a jolly good job he was maintaining some distance between them.
It would have been even better if she’d been the one to do so.
‘We had better eat our supper before the light grows too dim to see what we’re putting in our mouths,’ he said, opening his valise and taking out what was left of the provisions they’d bought in Tadburne Market.
‘We know exactly what we have for supper,’ she said wearily. ‘About two ounces of cheese and the heel of a loaf. Between the two of us.’
‘If it were only a few months later,’ he said, spreading the brown paper in which their meagre rations had been wrapped on the hay at her side, ‘I might have found strawberries growing by the stream.’
‘Strawberries don’t grow by streams,’ she retorted as he flicked open a penknife and cut both the cheese and the crust precisely in half. ‘They only grow in carefully tended beds. Where they have to be protected from frosts over winter with heaps of straw. Which is why they’re called strawberries.’
He raised his head and gave her a level look. ‘Blackberries, then. You cannot deny that blackberries thrive in the wild.’ He picked up the sheet of brown paper and its neatly divided contents and placed them on her lap.
From which he’d have to pluck his own meal. One morsel at a time.
She felt her cheeks heating at the prospect of his hand straying over her lap. Felt very conscious that her legs were totally bare beneath her skirts.
She picked up her slice of cheese and nibbled at it. What had they been talking about? Oh, yes...blackberries.
‘Some form of fruit would certainly be welcome with this cheese.’
‘And with the bread,’ he added. ‘It’s very dry.’
‘Stale, I think is the word for which you are searching,’ she said, having tried it. ‘But then, what can you expect for what we paid?’
No wonder the baker had let them have so much for so little. She’d been so proud of her skills at haggling. But they weren’t so great, were they? This bread was clearly left over from the day before.
‘I had a drink at the stream,’ he said, after swallowing the last of his share of their supper. ‘So I am not too thirsty. But what about you?’
‘I think I can just about manage to get the bread down. Though what we really need is a pat of butter to put on it. And then about a gallon of tea to wash it down.’
‘This will not do,’ he growled. And then, before she had any inkling of what he meant to do, he’d swept the brown paper to one side, hauled her up into his arms and was carrying her across the barn.
‘What are you doing?’
And what was she doing? She should by rights be struggling. Or at least demanding that he put her down. Not sort of sagging into him and marvelling at the strength of his muscular arms.
‘I’m taking you down to the stream so that you can have a drink. And dip your feet into the water. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,’ he said crossly. ‘I must be all about in my head. Dipping a handkerchief in the stream and then dabbing at your blisters...’ he sneered.
‘I daresay you were attempting to observe the proprieties,’ she said kindly. ‘For this isn’t at all proper, is it? Carting me about like a sack of grain?’
‘Proper? There has been nothing “proper” about our relationship from the moment I stretched my foot out in bed this morning and found you at the other end of it.’
Naked, at that, he could have added.
In the gathering dusk he strode down the field in the direction of the water she could hear babbling along its channel. Without giving the slightest indication that he was doing anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t even getting out of breath.
Whereas her own lungs were behaving most erratically. As was her heart.
‘And what we’re about to do is highly improper, Prudence, in case you need reminding.’
She looked at his face, and then at the stream, in bewilderment.
‘Watching me bathe my feet in the stream? You think that is improper conduct?’
‘No,’ he said abruptly, and then set her down on a low part of the bank, from where she could dangle her feet into the water with ease. ‘It’s not the bathing that’s improper. It’s what is going to happen after I carry you back to the barn.’
‘What?’ she asked, breathless with excitement.
No, not excitement. At least it shouldn’t be excitement. It should be maidenly modesty. Outraged virtue. Anything but excitement.
‘What is going to happen after you carry me back to the barn?’
‘We are going to have to spend the night together,’ he bit out. He rubbed his hand over the crown of his head. ‘All night. And, since it promises to be a cold one, probably clinging to each other for warmth.’
‘We don’t need to cling,’ she pointed out, since the prospect appeared to be disturbing him so much. ‘Hay is very good at keeping a body warm. I can remember sleeping in a barn a couple of times when I was very little and we were on the march. Papa made me a sort of little nest of it.’
He gave her a hard look. ‘If you were still a little girl that might work. But you are a full-grown woman. And there isn’t all that much hay, Prudence. It is more than likely we will end up seeking each other’s warmth. And, unlike last night, which neither of us can remember, I have a feeling we are going to recall every single minute of tonight. You will know you have slept with a man. You will never be able to look anyone in the eye and claim to be innocent. Tonight, Prudence, is the night that your reputation really will be well and truly ruined.’
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