Betina Krahn (30 page)

“How big is the basket?” she asked.

He expelled a patient breath. “Big.”

“Then you have two dozen eggs in a basket.”

“What if you put in another dozen, then another, then several others …”

“Then you’d probably have a few broken eggs … at the bottom of a basket you might not even be able to lift. Are you sure this isn’t science again?”

He made strangling motions toward her neck, and she laughed.

“You’d have too many eggs in one basket,” he redirected her answer. “And the more you pile them together, the more danger there is of some of them breaking.”

“Oh, then this must be
domestic
science.”

“Madeline!” He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her close, pressing her nose with his and staring her in the eyes. “You’d have all your eggs in the proverbial ‘one basket.’ The same holds true of hopes and dreams. Whenever you put all your heart into one project or one ideal, you risk being devastated when something goes wrong.”

“If something goes wrong. You’re saying I need a few additional baskets.” She looked down at her hands splayed across his chest as she braced against him. “I have other interests.” She was suddenly aware of the heat and hardness of his body under her hands. “A number of them.”

“Such as?”

“I read whenever I have time. I sketch and do water-colors. I keep up with my investments. Someday when I have time I’m going to take a trip around the world to check on my properties and other business concerns. Did you know I’m a tea planter? Well, the owner of a tea plantation in Ceylon.”

“Any other interests?” He ran his hand up her arm and across her collarbone.

She shivered. “I’m not very good at riding, but I’ve done it and I’d like to do it more. I own a rather nice stable at Chellingham, I’m told.”

“Anything else?” He trailed a finger up the side of her neck and she bit her lip.

“I do love music. I play piano, mostly for my own pleasure, and I adore opera. I don’t dance, but I intend to learn. I write poetry and collect wildflowers and grow roses. And when Ideal is on a secure footing, I’m going to establish a charitable trust for the families of missionaries. Then I may buy a steamship and start a trading company, and build a hotel by the sea, and someday, after suffrage, stand for public office.”

“Anything else?”

“That isn’t enough?” she said, struck belatedly by something deep and resonant in his voice. She looked at him. His eyes were darkening, intensifying, and she knew instinctively what was causing it. It was the same tantalizing awareness that was curling through her body.

“Well, I do have one other interest,” she said, feeling a surge of tingling warmth washing through her. “A rather private interest.”

“Sounds interesting,” he murmured, sliding his fingers into her hair and pulling her lips close to his. “What is it?”

“You.”

“Brazen creature.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her fully against him. “I can see it’s time for lesson number three.”

“Personal communications?” she asked, her eyes twinkling.

“Very personal.” He gave her a soft introductory kiss. Then a firmer, deeper one. An instant later her arms were gliding around his neck and she was returning that kiss with all the passion and pleasure he generated in her. By the time he ended that kiss, her head was swimming and her physical and emotional boundaries felt mushy and indistinct, as if she were half melted. It took a while for her to regain her senses and realize that he had slid her from his lap and was on his knees, removing his coat. He spread it on the ground beside her, then lowered her shoulders onto it and braced above her on one elbow.

“You are a very curious man, Cole Mandeville,” she said, tracing his features with her fingers.

“What do you mean,
curious
? You mean: How curious that he’s got hairy ears and can play ‘God Save the Queen’ on his nose? That sort of curious?”

She laughed. “Not exactly. Curious in that you seem to love discomfort.”

“I do?” He frowned. “I assure you, angel, I have no peculiar affinity for pain. In fact, I avoid it whenever possible.”

“Then why do you continue to wear those torturous collars, miserable starched shirts, and vests that ride up whenever you raise your arm?”

“Well … it’s … it’s …” Lord, how he hated to use the word “fashionable.” And “proper male garb” sounded even worse. He glanced down at his middle and, true enough, his vest
was
creeping up over his shirt.

“It’s dashed uncomfortable is what it is,” she concluded. “And illogical. And more than a little pretentious. In short, Lord Mandeville, you appear to be in dire need of a good reforming,” she said, yanking the knot from his tie. When he drew his chin back to look down at what she was doing, she smiled and ripped the narrow band of silk from his neck. Next she attacked the button of his collar and removed the starched band, flinging it aside.

“Hey!” He followed it anxiously with his gaze, but when her fingers started on the buttons of his vest, he began to reconsider his opposition. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Making you more comfortable. Liberating you. That’s what we ‘reformers’ do, you know.”

“Madeline … angel … sweetheart …” His voice lowered. “You do know that you’re undressing me …?”

“There.” She finished unbuttoning and pushed his vest up and over his shoulders, then down his back. He sat up,
and she pulled it from him altogether and tossed it aside. “Isn’t that more comfortable? freer? better?”

“
Ummm
 … better,” he concurred, sinking over her and bracing on his elbows. “I think I could come to like this ‘reform’ business.”

“These starched shirts will have to go.” She trailed her fingers down his shirtfront. “And we’ll have to get you some decent breeches.”

“Good Lord. Next thing you’ll be smothering me in tatty velvets and telling me cutting hair is a sin against nature.” He shuddered. “I’ll end up looking like Endicott.”

“Don’t be silly. Endicott is … 
Endicott
. What I have in mind for you will be comfortable and graceful. Classical dress, really.”

“This won’t involve wrapping up in a bedsheet like Marc Antony, will it?”

“Do I look like Cleopatra?”

He gave a relieved grin and ran a hand over her waist. “You look like heaven.” He gave her nose a squishy kiss, then lowered his lips to hers and drank deeply of her. “And you taste like the sweetest thing on earth.” He kissed her again, then raked her lower lip with his teeth.

His hands began to move over her bodice, exploring her, sending excitement cascading through her. He murmured approval of her soft curves and appreciated them thoroughly through her soft clothing before nudging aside a button, then another. His face was hot and his mouth sultry against her cool breasts. She responded restlessly to his touch, seeking a broader caress … wanting to feel him with her whole body … urging him, drawing him over her as he had been that night in the kitchen. And when he settled warm and hard against her aching loins, she reveled in the delicious weight of his body against hers.

She felt her skirt rising, felt his hand on her bare knee and gliding up her naked thigh. Then he shifted slightly to the side, and his hand replaced his body against her, stroking,
caressing, tantalizing her silk-clad skin. His fingers drifted across her pelvis, drawn to the sultry heat at her core, and she gasped as he touched her.

The movements of his fingers over her sensitive skin drew her body taut and focused her yearning. She shifted slightly, admitting his hand, holding her breath as his fingers stole past that last silken barrier. At his touch her senses began to spiral out of control, calling forth responses embedded deeper than consciousness or even dreams … in her very flesh and marrow. She arched and pressed against him, clasping handfuls of his shirt and his hair as she sought a deeper closeness and a more intimate kiss.

Then, when her senses went white and her breath and pulse were so hard and quick that one beat melted into another, she felt herself propelled upward on a sudden hot draft of sensation. Something shattered within her, hurling her into a drenching flood of release.

He ringed her face and throat with soft kisses, calling her back to him, reassuring her. When she opened her eyes, he was smiling down at her with eyes that were warm and golden and features that bore a patina of bronzed heat.

“That, my angel, is as close to heaven as you’ll get without wings.”

The contentment in her body wrapped sweet tendrils around her heart, and she smiled. “I’ve never felt anything like this before.”

“I would imagine not.” He brushed her hair back from her temples.

“Not just in my body,” she said, searching him, trying to understand what had just happened between them and what it meant. Her questions must have shown in her face.

“I know. I’m crazy about you too.” His smile was a bit pained. “Or maybe I’m just plain crazy. I’d probably have to be to set hands to you like this.”

She laughed and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Mad Madeline Duncan and Crazy Cole Mandeville. It sounds like a perfect match to me.”

They lay for some time in each other’s arms, reveling in and exploring the feelings growing between them. Madeline asked about Cole’s childhood and he told her about his life on the farm with the Macmillans, and about his tutors and schooling. He asked about her unconventional upbringing, and she described what she recalled of Africa and something of her life with Aunt Olivia. He laughed at her wry observations on the difficulties of being an heiress … new to society and money and lawyers, all. And she laughed at his wicked imitations of various people in society, his family, and the legal system.

It was only with great reluctance that they acknowledged the lowering sun and began to straighten their clothing and tidy their appearance. He started to don his vest, but, heeding her scowl, left it off and put his coat on over his shirt. When he looked for his missing collar, he finally found it in Madeline’s hand. She refused to give it to him, and he chased her up and down the bank, trapping her at last on a rock at the edge of the
stream. With a wicked smile she held it out and dropped it into the water.

“Madeline!” He was now collarless, for good or for ill, for the rest of the afternoon. He watched it float away and wondered how much more was going to change as a result of this encounter with her.

The crimson in the evening sky was sliding toward purple as they reached familiar landmarks that told them they were nearing the village. She was reluctant to let her time with him end and, from her seat behind him on the horse, she tightened her arms around him and laid her cheek against his back.

“Cole, if you were given a million pounds, what would you do with it?”

He contemplated the question. It sounded oddly familiar. After a moment he remembered that it was the question she had asked Sir William in court that first day.

“I’m not certain. I would have to give it some thought.”

“Would you use it to find the Macmillans and buy them some land of their own?” He tensed, and she wondered if she had made a mistake in broaching the subject. But after a moment’s silence he seemed to relax.

“While I was at Oxford I learned they had used the money I gave them to buy passage to America. Their neighbors said they had talked of a land company that settled people in a place called Kentucky.” She couldn’t see his face, but she could detect no bitterness in his voice, not even when he said: “They must have not thought too highly of my promises.”

“Have you ever thought of searching for them?”

“It’s too late for that. It’s all water under the bridge now. They’ve made their life by now, one way or another. And I’ve made mine.”

His words sounded final enough, she thought. Despite lingering traces of guilt and anger at his family’s arrogance, he seemed to have made some peace with what occurred. But that didn’t explain his disillusionment with the law and his withdrawal from his legal firm and the law society. There was
more here than met the eye, and she vowed that sooner or later she’d find it out and help him face it. A heart as strong and caring as his was too precious not to save.

By midmorning the next day it was evident that things were changing at the Ideal Garment Company. The first visible difference was the fact that Madeline didn’t appear until well after sunrise. The second was that Maple Thoroughgood and Priscilla Steadman were already at their stations when she did arrive. As she strolled through the sewing room on her way to the offices, the two approached her with an idea for modifying the girls’ dresses she had designed. The change, they said, might allow the girls more room for movement and growth. Madeline encouraged them to try their ideas by stitching a sample garment.

Watching them discuss it as they headed back to their machines, she felt a surge of satisfaction that they had invested so much thought and creativity in their work … even if it was just for the children’s clothing. But by late morning, when the last of the workers came stumbling through the door bleary-eyed and moving slowly after a night of celebration, her anger returned. She remembered what Cole had said about expressing her feelings. Well, there was at least one place that could use a healthy dose of outrage and indignation.