Dreaming (23 page)

Seymour
pulled up the collar of his coat and struggled up the last few hundred feet of the steep cliff. At its crest, the path led to a long carpet of rich lawn and elaborate gardens, protected from the relentless wind by a thick natural wall of chestnut and alder.

He followed a stone-flagged pathway through a hedgerow and around into a private garden lush with a rainbow of roses. Behind the gardens was a stone terrace that paralleled a three-story Georgian-style country home.

Sparkling in the late-day sun was a long line of white French doors that ran like a bright smile of welcome across the back of the house. Color bloomed profusely from the numerous flower urns that framed the terrace and stood guard near the stone steps. Unlike the dismally dark townhomes in
London
,
Seymour
’s own included, this house would be filled with sunlight and color.

There was a warmth to a home like this. Every corner of the gardens, every nook, had something joyous and special, something there to make one smile: A statue of a woman lovingly holding her child was mounted near the rim of a small rock-edged lily pond. A fountain in the form of a frog with a crown atop his head spilled water into a pool, where ducklings dipped and fluttered and quacked. Trellises dripping in pink and red fuchsias formed a welcoming arch at the garden’s entrance, and beneath the lush shade of a sprawling English oak, larks and turtle doves frolicked in a birdbath until a shiny black crow swooped in with a loud caw and chased the lilting birds away.

In the sudden flicker of nature’s silence he heard another song: the melodic voice of a woman humming Pachelbel. He turned toward the rose garden, where a tall thick bush shimmied like
Prinny’s
chins.
Seymour
stepped beneath the tree, where he had an unobstructed view.

A young woman was bent over the other side of the shimmying rosebush, trimming it with a pair of garden shears. Every few seconds, as her song reached a high note, a branch of the bush would fly with lilting fervor over her shoulder, to land behind her in a haphazard pile of clippings.

Watching her tend her garden with such pleasure made him smile. She hit a high C, and a sucker limb plopped onto the clippings pile, where a basket of kittens tugged at a bright yellow ball of yarn and nipped at the lace on her bobbing hemline.

The top of her head wouldn’t reach his chin, and she had glossy black hair that gleamed like crow’s feathers in the late afternoon sun. Her face was in profile, beautifully sculpted, a cameo come to life.

As if coated with pearls, her skin had a subtle tinge of luminescence. Nature’s kind hand had blessed her with a delicate nose and chin, full cranberry-red lips that rose into a slight smile when she cupped a lush silvery-gray rose and brought it close enough to revel in the scent.

It was a face that proved God’s perfection.

“I say there!” he called out, impulsively eager.

The young woman stiffened, her gaze darting to his and showing sheer panic. She gasped and slapped a hand up to cover half her face, but not before
Seymour
saw the ragged red-violet scar that sliced diagonally across one otherwise perfect cheek.

Time stood as awkwardly still as they did. Finally she shifted slightly, so her scarred cheek was again hidden from view. She had moved subtly, smoothly, as if the protective motion was instinctive, then she let her hand fall away with a kind of resigned despair. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

He took a step toward her and she took a step back, her eyes filled with doe like panic. All the
joie de vivre
that had been in her was gone, her stance wooden and stiff. Breakable.

He wanted to tell her it didn’t matter, but he couldn’t find words that didn’t sound cruelly trite, words she had most likely heard a thousand times.

“Daresay, didn’t mean to frighten you,” he mumbled finally, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. “I’m Viscount Seymour. Here to see Sir Hunt on an urgent matter.”

“My father is at the stables.” She signaled by pointing the shears in the direction of the sun. “On the western side of the house and across the drive.” She spoke to the rosebush, her face averted and never rising enough to again meet his curious look.

She was too lovely to wear shame so heavily. He felt her burden as surely as if his back were bent from its weight.

He wanted to speak to her, but his power of speech had abandoned him. The moment was eternal, empty, and strikingly harsh. Finally he turned away, a little sadder because he didn’t know what else to do or say. He walked pensively toward the western path, but he hadn’t gotten far when he heard the sharp click of a door closing.

He stopped and turned, wanting a last glimpse of her. Like a miracle one must see twice to believe. But the spot by the rosebush was vacant. A haphazard pile of rose branches, an empty overturned basket, and a pair of discarded garden shears were the only signs she’d ever even been there. Those lonely things and the memory of the sweetest song he had ever heard.

His hungry gaze followed a path of crushed flowers and leaves that scattered across the terrace and stopped in front of one of the French doors. He looked at the door for the longest time, then murmured, “I’m sorry.”

As if in answer to his words, the drape inched back. A dark figure stood behind the door, the person’s identity safely hidden by the piercing glare of sunlight on the glass. But her small silhouette was unmistakable. She watched him.

Heedfully slow, he walked back to the rosebush, bent, and plucked off the very silvery rose she had cupped in her hand. He lifted the flower to his nose, then ever so casually to his lips.

He carefully slid the stem through a buttonhole on his coat lapel. The subtle tang of roses filled his senses, and the whisper of a smile touched his mouth.

Out of habit, he fingered the well-rubbed good-luck charms on his watch fob. His thoughtful gaze lit on the rose, then shifted to the charms in his hand. Perhaps fortune shined down on him. His smile grew from a whisper to a shout, and he walked toward the stables, whistling Pachelbel.

“What’s inside the sack?”

“I have no idea,” Richard said in a wry tone as he stopped untying the wad of knots in the bag’s drawstring. He slowly looked over his shoulder at the hellion. She knelt behind him in the sand, her small hands braced on his shoulders while she tried to peer around him with eager anticipation.

“Perhaps you should let me open it. You’re not doing it very quickly.”

“
Perhaps
if I didn’t have to answer so many questions I could open it more quickly.”

She cocked her head and gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder. “I didn’t
realize
that you are unable to do two things at once.”

He stared at her, trying to decide if she was being purposely obtuse. Her face was completely serious. He took an extra second to contemplate his answer, then a few minutes to contemplate her answer.

With a mocking wave of surrender, he sat back in the sand and handed her the drawstrings. “Here, hellion. It’s all yours.”

She had untied the sack before he could rest an arm on his bent knee. “Oh . . . look!” Her voice was muffled because her head was buried inside the sack opening.

She sat up, laughing with delight, and pushed her tousled hair away from her eyes. Her face was flushed pink, and there was a sparkle in her eyes that almost convinced him there truly was treasure inside that old sea-stained hopsack.

A breeze drifted by and carried with it her fading laughter. But her smile lingered behind, bright and warm and refreshing. He had never known that a smile could carry so much power just because it was honest and unaffected.

Her charm held no artifice, and a thought came to him in the form of a revelation. What he beheld at that moment was true beauty; not beauty that was only physical—the perfect nose, the heart-shaped face, flawless skin, and a mouth that a man could die in— but something much rarer, so rare in fact he hadn’t known such a thing existed until this moment.

She had beauty of spirit.

It was rather unsettling to realize that he, who reveled in his own worldliness, could be ignorant of anything. But he was sorrowfully ignorant when it came to her.

Such a foreign thing it was, deriving quiet pleasure from just watching her. But he did, and he smiled, because, for some reason he preferred not to analyze, he couldn’t bloody well stop himself.

He sat there in the sand, taking in her expressive motions, her every look, through jaded eyes that were starved for something fresh and unknown.

He tried to remember how long it had been since he’d enjoyed simply watching a woman be herself. And he wasn’t certain he had ever known a woman who had been completely and refreshingly herself.

At least none of the women he’d known intimately—a thought that forced him to admit something he’d known for a while. His personal life had turned stale.

His gaze shifted to the hellion. She had her head buried in that sack one minute, and the next she was smiling with delight at some new treasure. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then wondered what it would be like to be with a woman who wasn’t bedding his title.

His mind played with another unknown, something he’d never experienced or even contemplated before: whether there could be pleasure with someone who knew nothing of the sexual act. The women he had been with couldn’t spell “virgin” much less remember when they’d been one.

Virginity was saved for marriage, and he had only one married friend, Alec, Duke of
Belmore
. His wife, Joy, was an original and a pleasure to be around, if one could avoid her pet weasel. And he supposed she was the only woman besides the hellion he would call refreshing.

But he didn’t know Joy intimately. If he had, Alec would have killed him. He looked at the hellion. He didn’t exactly know her intimately either. However, that could be easily corrected.

He watched her laugh and had the insane thought that he’d probably kill anyone who touched her, anyone who soiled the joy in that laughter. Anyone who would hurt her.

Except perhaps himself.

Odd, wasn’t it, that when he looked at her now he saw the young woman, the female ready for a man. A body with lush curves and shadowed cleavage, a long white neck—the pathway to a mouth so sensual he ached from just looking at it. The memory of shapely calves, blue-
ribboned
garters, and soft pale thighs exposed in the sunlight—a sensual pathway of another more carnal sort.

Yes, he looked at the hellion . . . and thought of seduction.

He’d sunk to a new low.

One by one she had pulled out a round of cheese, some dried meat, two loaves of dark bread, fruit, a tin of biscuits, a jug of cider, and other food similar to that which they’d been fed aboard the second ship.

The hunger he was feeling, however, had nothing to do with food.

She’s fragile and you’ll hurt her.

Yes, he could hurt her, and that thought told him he hadn’t reached bottom yet. A long-lost remnant of conscience existed within his dark, bleak soul. Somewhere.

But he had to ask himself how long it would last. He had no answer. For the first time in days he felt the need to hide in the numbing effects of a barrel of brandy, rum, gin, wine—anything that would skew his world for a while.

But there was no drink to be found. Instead, he found himself looking at her again, because he had to. His gaze locked on her mouth. God, what a mouth.