Dreaming (8 page)

“This conversation is going nowhere,” he said in the cold tone he used with someone he wanted to dismiss.

“That’s because you won’t answer me,” she said with an innocent frankness that couldn’t be dismissed.

She sat down suddenly, leaning against the crate and arranging her skirts. When she had them just so, she looked up at him. She frowned, then searched his face. “You don’t look very well. Does your head still hurt?”

“Yes!” he barked.

Gus barked too.

Richard slowly turned to glare at the dog. The beast glared back at him.

“He barks like that whenever you shout.” She cocked her head and frowned thoughtfully. “You look as if you’re in pain again. Perhaps your head hurts from the fall, although I hate to bring up the subject because it seems to agitate you. A rest would probably do you good, so why don’t you sit down right here.” She patted the floor next to her. “And rest your eyes. All that glowering must make them tired.”

He didn’t move.

“Richard?”

Gus crept forward in a crouch, growling, his eyes darting toward Richard, his teeth showing white against his black lips.

“Come over here, Gus.” She patted the floor on the other side of her.

The beast eased past him, grumbling, then slunk near her other side, where he walked in a leery circle a few times, then plopped down with a loud thud and rested his damp snout on her lap. His narrowed eyes never left Richard’s.

She smiled up at him expectantly, then patted the floor on the other side of her again. “Sit here. You’ll feel better, I’m certain.”

Richard gave up and slid down the crates he’d been leaning against. He sat next to her on the plank floor, stretched his legs out, and crossed his boots.

His arm touched her and he heard her slight intake of breath. He could feel her stare and returned it, only to find her gaze on the point where their arms had touched.

He shook his head, aware that he had completely surrendered to her silliness. But perhaps if he did as she asked she would be quiet for a blessed minute.

With a sigh as big as her imagination, she leaned her head back against the wooden crates. There was a sweet silence, then she began to fidget.

He could feel it coming. About one blessed minute of quiet was all he was going to get.

“Are your eyes closed?”

Not again
. He took one long breath, then leaned his own head back and snapped, “Yes.” Closing his eyes was easier than talking to her. He amended that thought: Listening to her.

“My eyes are closed too. Do you feel better?”

“No.”

“Give it a few minutes. I’m dreaming that we’re on a smugglers’ ship.”

“How inventive.”

She laughed. “As I said before, you can be such a wit.”

I must be a halfwit to be doing this
. He gave a derisive laugh.

“Keep your eyes closed,” she warned.

To avoid another round of senseless argument, he kept his eyes closed. He heard her getting up and he could sense her standing before him. “Try to imagine this,” she said. “In my dream, I’m the damsel in distress.”

Good God
 . . . a
bloody fairy tale
.

“And you are . . . my lord hero.”

His eyes shot open.

She sank to a deep curtsy, until her gaze was even with his. She batted her eyelashes.

Staring, he wondered how long she could flutter those eyelashes at him and not appear cross-eyed. Settling back against the crate, he rested one arm atop a raised knee and let himself be entertained. So this was how the hellion flirted. Interesting.

She started to rise, but her knees cracked like Christmas walnuts. “Ouch!” She grabbed onto the crate, frowning down at her knees as she rubbed one, muttering, “How did she do that?”

He was struck with an overpowering urge to laugh.

After a space of time she stopped rubbing her knees and straightened. She looked at him and frowned. “You’re just sitting there.”

“You told me to relax.”

“This is exactly what I meant about men not being very perceptive.”

“Then tell me, hellion, what do you want?”

“You’re not living up to your reputation.”

“Which reputation is that? Drinking, gambling, or debauching?”

She planted her hands on her hips. “You are supposed to be a rake.”

“Ah, the Reverend Mrs.
Poppit
. Didn’t she warn you about flirtations with rakehells?”

“Yes, but you’re different.”

“I see.” He nodded. “Known a lot of rakes, have you?”

“Oh no. Only you.”

“Yet you seem to have a vast amount of knowledge on how I am supposed to act.”

“I’ve been told I have a vivid imagination.”

He laughed then, because he could do little else, and because she probably had more imagination than the Grimm brothers and Charles Perrault put together. “I’m certain you do. Now, do you want to tell me what that little display was all about?”

She sighed, then plucked at her skirts for so long he actually became used to the rarity of silence. He stood. Then he felt her look, felt the tentativeness of it, and he watched her even more closely.

She was searching for courage. After some interminable minutes she took a deep breath and she blurted out, “I’ve never been kissed before. But there’s a good reason. I wanted you to be the first. Winston Easterly tried once—to kiss me, that is. He cornered me behind the rectory after the services on Sunday, but I couldn’t imagine anyone else’s lips ever touching mine, so I shoved him in the Reverend Mrs.
Poppit’s
roses . . . the ones with the witches’ thorns that are so long?” She held up her hand to show him how long “so long” was.

He shifted closer.

“He was rather surprised—Winston Easterly, not the Reverend, nothing seems to surprise the Reverend—and he, Winston, shouted words that should never have been said on a Sunday, let alone behind the rectory.”

She took a quick breath. “I was saving myself for you. I told him so. And he never came near me again. His sister
Emmaline
said that the physician spent two hours plucking the sharp—”

Richard grabbed her waist and pulled her against him.

“—thorns . . . oh my—”

His mouth covered hers. The silence was a second taste of heaven. He’d found the perfect way to keep her quiet and teach her not to go around asking gentlemen to kiss her.

She stiffened, and the proof of her inexperience showed when she puckered her lips tight as the Regent’s stays. He touched her
jawline
, stroking softly. With a sigh of submission, she slowly curled one tentative hand around his neck.

He opened his eyes and watched her face, then devilishly swept his tongue across her pursed mouth. Her eyes flew open, wide and questioning. He pulled her tighter against him until he was aware of every soft woman’s curve he’d missed before.

Her eyes grew misty and drifted closed. Her lips softened, and he explored her mouth with an intimacy that was foreign to first kisses. Her first lesson.

An apt pupil, she kissed him back, and to his surprise the lesson was lost, for the kiss became real. Too real.

His sanity returned—fast—and he pulled back, staring down and running a hand through his hair in frustration. One arm was still about her back, the only thing supporting her. He heard her mumble something about this being so much better than kissing a door.

He awaited her reaction and ignored his. Her foggy gaze cleared, and she smiled as if she’d just been given the world.

Before he could tell her what she’d really been given, she touched her lips reverently. Her look held the joy of a miracle, and she backed away.

Her elbow hit the closest lantern.

It crashed to the floor.

The lamp oil burst into brilliant orange and blue flames.

So did Richard’s cloak.

Unfortunately, he was still wearing it.

Chapter 4

“Hell’s teeth!” He shot up and ripped the cloak off, stomping out the flames. He bent and picked it up, using it to whip out and finally smother the oil fire that spilled blue-orange across the floor.

“I’m so sorry . . . ” she whispered, her hands to her mouth as a cloud of smoke drifted ghostlike between them.

Richard waved it away and glared at her for as long as his patience and the sting of smoke in his eyes would allow.

The silence was so tense the smoke almost vibrated. He stared down at the floor where the cloak still smoldered, then stomped on it with a vengeance. It was a foolish action for a grown man, even more foolish for him, but it kept him from killing her.

He watched his cloak smolder. It was a recent
Bond Street
purchase with five capes. He bent down and picked it up. It now had one and a half capes, and the half it had was burning.

As he counted to one hundred, he glared at the smoke rising to the rafters. His gaze sharpened on the ceiling above, suddenly noticing the small snatches of what he realized was lantern light showing from the cracks between the wooden rafters.

The smoke was slowly rising toward those cracks. He wondered if perhaps there might be some sort of trap door, but he couldn’t see clearly enough because thick smoke hovered among the rafters.

He could feel her stare, and after a pensive minute she asked, “Are you terribly angry?”

A grunt was the only sound he could make with his jaw so tight.

“I thought so.” She paused, then said, “It was an accident.”

“I’m quite familiar with your accidents.”

Her face was so defeated. She pulled her arms tightly to her. He had the uncomfortable feeling that she hugged herself because of a desperate need for comfort. He was not one for giving comfort to anyone. He chose to look away.

In a too quiet voice, she said, “I’ll pay for it. Although it might take me a while. I’m sure it was very costly. I have a few pounds saved, but probably not nearly enough. I could sell my mother’s pearls. They are very valuable. Perhaps you would take them as a sign of my good faith; then when I have all the money I need, I could buy them back and you could have a new cloak and I wouldn’t lose one of the only things I have left of my mother’s.”

He shut his eyes, but he couldn’t shut his mind to the most impassioned and sincere speech he’d ever heard. And he felt about as petty as he’d ever felt in all of his twenty-nine years. “It was an old cloak,” he said gruffly.

“It was?” There was a touch of hope in her voice.

“Yes. Very old. I needed a new one.”

“Well then . . . if you’re certain . . . ”

“Keep your money. I can buy a thousand cloaks should I choose to.”

“Oh . . . I forgot. Now that you’re an earl, you must be very wealthy.”

He didn’t respond. He was too busy trying to figure out how she had manipulated him into sounding like such a pompous ass.

“I wonder how I shall repay you, then.”

“I told you to forget about it. Keep your pearls and your money.”

She managed, despite the cloud of smoke, to heave a sigh. “Oh, I couldn’t do that. You just saved me. I need to thank you. Why, if you hadn’t acted so bravely and quickly, we would have been burned into sheer nothingness.”

Life isn’t that kind
. He looked at her. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s to be prepared to move quickly whenever I’m around you.”

“And you certainly did,” she said seriously.

He shook his head, half expecting to hear a loud
whoosh
as his sarcasm flew over her head. When he glanced at her, she had that about-to-burst look again. “Why do I have the feeling you have something monumental to say?”

“You’re becoming very perceptive . . . for a man.”