A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (12 page)

Tom interested Lord Frost in a nip of brandy and the smoking of a cigar. The two of them declined to walk at all. Giovanni gallantly took Megan on one arm and her sister on the other. This put Miss Frost momentarily out of sorts until, with a toothsome smile, she leaned--too heavily Megan thought--on Reed’s arm, all the while complaining that her ankle was not yet feeling altogether better and did he mind going very slowly for her sake.

Ever the gentleman, Reed slowed his progress to a snail’s pace. Megan’s energetic, chattering threesome soon left the pair behind. Giovanni did his best to charm both of the women he escorted. He was, Megan decided, as pleasant as the balmy breeze that cooled their brows, as pleasant as the soft cooing of a dove, as pleasant as pleasant could be. And yet, she could not stop thinking of Reed and Miss Frost and what they might be saying, or doing together, in the growing darkness.

What they had found to do she saw all too publicly displayed in the moonlit walk back to the cottage. Unexpectedly, their trio came upon the pair as they rounded a curve in the shrubbery-screened track. Before them unfolded a scene Megan would never have believed had she not witnessed it.

Limed by moonlight, Reed held Miss Frost uplifted in his arms, her feet quite removed from all contact with the ground. In this posture they were kissing! Kissing!

Megan was pained and shocked by the sight! Reed, she thought, had but to grow hair on his haunches and horns from his head and he was a bronzed satyr with an unwilling woman in his arms. The all too passionate exchange was made all the more shocking by the fact that Miss Frost was beating Reed’s upper arms with the flats of both hands. He released her abruptly, with a choked, even a pained sound, looking shocked and bewildered, his mouth covered by his hand.

Miss Frost, on the other hand, let loose a screech that sent roosting birds winging. “How dare you!” she cried. “Monster! How dare you take advantage of me in such an improper fashion?”

“How thare I? You bip me! I’m rudthy well bleething.” This unintelligible exclamation erupted from behind the hand Reed held to his mouth.

“Oh my!” Gussie gasped. “What did he say?”

Miss Frost turned a tear-stained face in their direction. “Giovanni!” she wailed. “Thank heaven you have come.” She flung herself into his comforting arms where she wept against his shirtfront in a most affecting manner.

“What is this!” Giovanni fairly exploded. “What have you done, scoundrel?”

“Me?” Reed sounded plaintiff. The explanation that followed was no more coherent than before. “I haff done nuthang. She bip ma tang!” He moved his hand away from his mouth. Both were red with blood.

“Dear God. Has he gone mad? What is he saying?” Gussie said.

“I believe he is saying that Miss Frost bit his tongue,” Megan hazarded.

Reed nodded enthusiastically. “Yeth. Yeth. Ow!”

“Though why she had access to his tongue in the first place is beyond me.”

“Indeed!” Gussie huffed. “I am shocked and appalled. There can be no excuse for such behavior.

“No excuses,” Giovanni strongly agreed. “Only apologies.” He glared pointedly at Reed.

“Apologithze?” Reed looked at him incredulously as he dabbed at his tongue with his handkerchief. “Affer thith?” He pointed at his mouth.

“You will apologize at once or I shall expect satisfaction of you!” Giovanni insisted.

“Ha!” Eyes blazing, Reed approached Miss Frost, who cowered, whimpering, in Giovanni’s arms.

“You stay away from me,” she cried out. “I thought you were a gentleman.

“And I, mathame. . .” he bowed “having mithtaken you for a lady, mothe humbly beg your pardon. Intheed, I exthtend thinthere regreths that our paths ever crothed. Ith there any way I can atone for my folly in having been tho completely taken in by you?”

When he received no response, Reed turned on his heel. Still daubing his handkerchief to his tongue, he stalked away, leaving everyone absolutely speechless. Even Miss Frost ceased her whimpering.

Giovanni’s face flushed crimson. “You are a complete cad, sir,” he called after Reed’s retreating figure.

Reed’s answer floated back to them from the darkness. “You, thir, are the complethe fool.”

Angry, hurt and betrayed, Megan caught up to Reed outside the cottage. He seemed to wait for her in the darkness. He had sat himself down just opposite the cottage door, on a stile that bridged the stone wall edging the lane. “And do you, too, believe I mend to harm Mith Frotht?” he asked softly.

“Is there good reason why I should not believe what I saw plainly with my own eyes, Reed? Really! How could you?”

“Id wath nod as id appeared,” he protested vehemently.

“Oh no? Why don’t you tell me what happened then?” Her voice sounded far calmer than she felt. It held only a trace of sarcasm. Never had her trust in Reed’s intentions been so thoroughly shaken.

“She trigged me,” he said angrily “stho it would look egthactly as it muth have looked to you. I am thtill puthzling out why.” He fell silent.

She let the stillness close in around them, unsure of what he might reveal to her--unsure she would be able to bear it if he had really forced himself on an unwilling woman, even Laura Frost, whom she had begun to detest.

“We were walking thlowly along the lane,” he said. “I had in fact, thuggested we turn back, tho dependant had Mith Frothst become on my arm for thupport. Her ankle wath troubling her. We heard your approach, the three of you, laughing and talking. All of a thudden, Mith Frost wath not bethide me.”

“No?”

“No. She had let go of my arm and wath climbing a thtile.”

“A stile? But how could she climb a stile with her ankle hurting her as much as she claims?”

He shrugged and shook his head. “I cannot imagine whad pothethed her.”

“She climbed the stile. What then?”

He sighed, jumped down from the stile he sat upon and turned to look at it, as if imagining Miss Frost again in his mind. “
Help me down
, she called to me. He nodded to an imaginary Miss Frost. He waved a hand at Megan. “Pretend to be her.”

Megan hesitated.

“Pleathe.”

“You do not expect me to bite your tongue, or kiss you, or anything like that do you?”

He snorted. “No!”

She accepted his assistance in scaling the stile. “There,” he said. “Now, turn and athk me to help you down.”

Again she hesitated. “So, you were helping her down? That was what you hope to convince me I saw? Doing it a bit brown, Reed. You were kissing her! Do not try to convince me otherwise.”

“Me, kithing her? Far-fetched as it may sound, she was kithing me! And not a friendly kith, either. It wath pothitively ravenous! She had my bleething tongue between her teeth to keep me from pulling away, she did!”

“Really Reed,” Megan said skeptically. “I am still confused as to how she managed to acquire such an odd grip on you. Get me down from here. I will not believe such a Banbury tale.”

He put his hands on either side of her waist, as if to help her down. “But that ith prethithly why I athked you to ged up there. Tho you could thhee.”

“Thhee what? I mean, see what?”

“In thith position, I cannod compel you to kith me.” He swung her away from the stile, even as he spoke and in demonstration tried to force her to kiss him. For Megan it was very troubling to find herself dependant, if only for an instant, on the strength of his arms, her body leaned into his. Their eyes locked with as much heat as his hands clasped her waist. For a moment all reason abandoned her. She swayed forward, drawn to him in an elemental way over which she seemed to have little control. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to know what the warmth of his mouth would feel like against hers. She had every intention of bending her head so that his lips might meet hers, but in making the first move to do just that, her sense of propriety returned. What he had said was true. So high above him was she in position that he could not compel her to kiss him. She would have had to bend over to match her lips to his, just as Miss Frost had bent over, despite the pounding protest of her hands!

“I see!” she whispered, strangely giddy as he lowered her gently to the ground and let go his hold on her.

“You believe me?”

Unsteadily, she looked away, unable to face the intensity of expression with which he awaited an answer.

“Pleathe thay you do!” He bent down that he might stare into her eyes--so close he took her breath away. For the second time that day she regretted making such a point of the fact that she had no intention of kissing him. “Really, Megan. You muth believe me. My heart ith broken otherwithe.”

She laughed a trifle hysterically at the failings of his tongue. “I believe you,” she said quietly, hoping to satisfy him, so that he would pull away. Otherwise she would fall into his arms.

“Thank God!” He stood up straight again with a heartfelt sigh.

Hot and breathless, Megan smoothed her dress, hands brushing the very spots where Reed had held her as he helped her down. “It is Gussie and Tom who will have trouble swallowing the tale,” she warned him.

“Thounds a great faradithel, doeth it?”

“A faradiddle indeed,” she agreed.

Chapter Thirteen

I
t took a great deal of explaining, but in the end, even Tom and Gussie were convinced that Miss Frost had behaved very queerly, and Reed had not after all, divested himself of all decency.

“Cunning young woman,” Gussie said as she offered Reed a cold tea-leaf compress for his mouth. “I wonder what she can be after to have used you so shamelessly, and with such careful timing that all of us should see and misinterpret things exactly as she wanted us to.”

“The woman is a brazen tease,” Tom said.

“I think she did it to regain Giovanni’s shtraying intereth,” Reed mumbled around the compress.

“She did run straight into his arms,” Gussie agreed thoughtfully. “But I do not understand why she should be so keen to have him.”

“I am relieved to hear you say as much, dearest,” Tom said jovially, “but I am a little surprised as well. I would have thought Giovanni Giamarco the ideal that every other gentleman must be held up to. He is rich, handsome and singularly attentive to whatever woman he happens to be with.”

“Rich? Isth he?” Reed asked around the edge of the compress, his interest keener than Megan had expected.

“Aye! Rich as Croesus to hear Lord Frost tell the tale. Land, prize horses, acres of vineyards, an incomparable art collection and more.”

Reed frowned. “I had no notion.”

Gussie made an expansive gesture with her hands. “I would not have him if I could. I find him too inconstant in his attentions. No woman can like that in a potential husband.”

“Am I constant then,” Tom asked, bussing her on the cheek.

“As constant and dependable as the ticking of a clock, my love,” she said affectionately.

“But not half so annoying I hope.”

She laughed. They all went away to bed laughing, but not until Tom, too, evidenced his completely restored confidence in Reed in saying, “Do you still mean to make the trip to Keswick tomorrow?”

“Haf you any objecshun?” Reed asked.

“No, no. To the contrary. It will be far harder for Giovanni to call you out, or some such foolishness, if we disappear for the day.”

Disappear they did, though Megan and Reed did not go to Keswick to shop as Gussie and Tom did. They went instead, armed with sketchbooks, watercolors and easels, to a hillside a few miles east of town where the Castlerigg standing stones dominated a slight promontory.

Clouds blotted the sky, thick and fleecy, like grazing Herdwick sheep above the mountaintops. They promised rain, perhaps on the morrow, which to Megan seemed completely in keeping with Reed’s intention to abandon them. The sun had as much difficulty penetrating the white masses as she had in finding reasons to smile. The cloud’s underbellies, like her spirits, were thrown into shadow, as were the folds of the mountains and hills that blued the horizon. Was her future, without Reed beside her, as shadowed as the landscape?

She hoped not.

As it turned out, it was the perfect day to view the stone circle. There was a quiet mystery to the place, a sense of waiting, hushed holiness. As they first caught sight of the standing stones, shards of golden sunshine broke through the clouds just above the hilltop. As if the light was God’s fingers, it reached down to touch the circle of thirty-odd, weathered stones.

“Heaven help us, Nutmeg! Look at it!” Reed exclaimed, flipping out his sketchpad, that his pencil might capture the mystery of light and shadow. His swollen tongue seemed much recovered today.

Megan did not immediately busy herself with her own pencils and charcoal. She was possessed of no great desire to paint. Instead, she walked among the stones, staring, touching, losing herself in a sense of awe. The worn, dog’s teeth circle was more oval than round. When she came to their center she turned slowly, gaze traveling busily over each of the monumental boulders until she came to the sight of Reed. His attention focused in intent if flickering bursts, first on the view before him as seen through his umber Claude glass, and then on what his darting pencil portrayed in his sketchbook. She wished he might focus so intently on her.

“What stories they might tell,” she said. “Imagine. How they came to be here. What effort it took to gather them together. What purpose they have served.”

What purpose did the yearning she suffered for Reed serve? Why did her heart ache with longing for this man, who recognized it not?

“One cannot help but wonder why.” His pencil never wavered. “Why did they bother? It had to be a huge bother, don’t you agree? Carting these enormous bits of rock here. Setting them up just so. The locals say they are Druid temples of some sort. Worshipping the sun, or some such nonsense.”

Megan regarded the stones. Why could she not harden her heart like these stones, that it might better weather the storms of love and desire? “I wonder,” she said softly, “is this cursed or blessed ground?”