Most Eagerly Yours (24 page)

“Perhaps,” Aidan said. Then a sharp male voice drew his attention to the front of Henderson’s audience. “But it appears not everyone shares your exuberance.”

“Would it not be easier to place the spa at the base of the hill?” Geoffrey Taft was complaining again. “Perhaps with simpler engineering the project would not have suffered repeated delays.”

“But in so doing, we would lose this unparalleled view.” Henderson swept an arm out wide.

“I shall admit to having entertained similar qualms,” Devonlea spoke up. “But our Mr. Henderson is correct. If mere facilities sufficed, Bath would not have ceased flourishing in recent times. Nowadays people prefer to spend their leisure in exceptional surroundings.”

“What do you think?” Melinda whispered to Aidan. “Were they wise to pick this location, or will these feats of engineering prove impossible to achieve?”

“Good questions both.” He offered his arm, and with a fond smile she leaned lightly on him as he led her farther from the crowd. “But what most sparks my curiosity is what possessed you to give up this land.”

Melinda went still, her features frozen in chagrin. “How did you know?”

He raised an eyebrow in answer.

She pursed her lips. “Even as a small child, you were far more observant than anyone ever gave you credit for.”

“A person learns a lot simply by being quiet, and one can never be sure what knowledge will prove useful in the future.” He brought them to a stop, removed her hand from the crook of his arm, and held it between his own. “So . . . the land. Why did you sell it? Surely your finances are not—”

“Dear me, no, I am in no financial difficulty. And I did not sell the property. I donated it.”

It was his turn to be dumbfounded. “You
gave
it away?”

“
Traded
would be the more precise term, in exchange for a sizable share in the Summit Pavilion. Oh, don’t look like that. Bath is my home, and I believe in this project. Its success will ensure a great future for the city.”

“Melinda, it is a risky venture at best. Why didn’t you seek my counsel? Did you at least have one of your sons-in-law look over the records?”

Anger sharpened her expression. “Need I remind you I am no child, and Fenwick House and all its property belongs to me outright, to do with as I see fit.”

He studied her. So this was the business she had been conducting with the Bath Corporation, the donation of the land upon which the Summit Pavilion would be built.
If
it was built.

And she had clearly not intended for him to know.

“Why didn’t you mention this?” he asked. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course I do. I suppose I didn’t wish to be dissuaded. As I said, I am of independent means and perfectly capable of making decisions for myself. Do you seek outside validation once you have made up your mind? No. Then why should I be expected to simply because I am female?”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if there are no more questions,” Giles Henderson announced, “we may now all sample more of Monsieur Rousseau’s elixir.”

Spurred to action, the footmen hauled a barrel beneath the largest of the striped canopies and pried open the top. Using a ladle, Rousseau himself began filling cup after cup with the foul-smelling water. All around him, excitement eddied through the company.

It was all Aidan could do not to knock the cup from Melinda’s hand. How many sham remedies had his father held to his mother’s lips in those final months, her body nonetheless wasting away and the family fortune falling to ruins? But he bit his tongue as Melinda tipped her head back and drained her cup. A cup found its way into his own hand.

Across the way, he watched as Laurel also sipped a sample. Her nose wrinkling, she tossed a glance over her shoulder, another to the side. Was she considering pouring the brew into the grass? He wished she would. Fitz placed his hand at the bottom of her cup and gave a nudge of encouragement. Laurel raised the brim to her lips, shut her eyes, and drank.

Something inside Aidan’s chest tightened painfully. The woman perplexed him, raised his suspicions, angered him . . . yet all he wished to do was protect her. Yesterday, she had nearly brought a Home Office operation to ruin, yet his foremost instinct had been to ensure her safety.

Moments like these reminded him that his position with the Home Office often rendered him powerless to safeguard those he cared most about. He could not confide in any of them: not Melinda, Beatrice, Fitz . . . not Laurel, either. He could not explain why he suspected this elixir and the entire Summit Pavilion were fraudulent. He could only go on pretending ignorance until he stumbled upon enough evidence to bring the perpetrators to their knees.

Had Melinda been swindled out of valuable acreage? Were they all now ingesting poison? He had no choice but to remain silent, keep watching, and hope he found the answers before any real harm was done.

He raised his cup and drank.

L
ike fine brandy, the elixir spread warmth and a pleasant tingle through Aidan’s body. He felt no ill effects, nothing that would lead him to suspect the water held anything but the ingredients Claude Rousseau had claimed.

What had he been so worried about? That the past, his mother’s wretched ordeal, would repeat itself? Or that Melinda’s illness at the Pump Room had been caused by the elixir? Around him, he saw no evidence of that being the case, nothing but high spirits and lively conversation punctuated with laughter.

He could not deny the elixir’s immediate positive effects. He felt buoyant and energized, as though he could easily sprint a mile or go several rounds in the wrestling ring.

Now, there was a thought. He hadn’t wrestled since university. What on earth made him think of it?

Melinda studied him as a half smile played about her lips. “Well?”

“Perhaps there is something to this after all.” The breath he drew deep into his lungs sent a quivering rush of vitality to his muscles. “I feel extraordinary.”

“And now you understand the excitement that has taken hold here in Bath.”

“The list,” he said. “You have been on it all along, meaning you’ve taken regular doses.”

“Yes, and except for a bout of fatigue brought on by overexerting myself, I have never felt better.”

Aidan nodded, deciding to dismiss the tiny, nagging doubt that persisted in a far-off corner of his mind.

A crack of thunder ripped across the hillside. Melinda jumped. Several ladies cried out in alarm, followed by nervous laughter.

“Thunder in March? How very odd.” Lady Harcourt waddled to a corner of the pavilion and peered out at the sky. Her several chins jiggled in urgency. “Good heavens, it is time for us to take our leave. I fear the storm is nearly upon us.”

The company fell to disorder as people scrambled for their belongings and shouted orders for their drivers to raise the folded carriage tops. As the first fat drops fell, Melinda’s footman came running with an umbrella.

“Ye don’t want to be catchin’ your death, milady.”

Melinda ducked under the umbrella. “Where is Laurel? I don’t see her.”

Aidan didn’t see her, either. In the confusion, he spotted his three cousins climbing into their parents’ sturdy brougham. Fitz handed his sister into her barouche, then climbed in behind her. Devonlea followed him in and shut the door. Margaret Whitfield let out a screech as she and Captain Taft made a dash for his curricle.

The rain fell heavier, slashing at an angle across the hills. Water slid off the striped canopies in sheets, while gusts of wind threatened to upend the steel and canvas structures.

Aidan turned back to Melinda and raised his voice to be heard. “You go. I’ll find Laurel and see that she gets home safely.”

She hesitated, seeming about to argue the matter. Then she nodded and hurried off with her servant beneath the umbrella.

Heedless of the rain, the dripping footmen continued packing away picnic supplies and dismantling the pavilions. In the midst of their activity, a figure in dusty rose stripes appeared. Like a flower tossed along by the wind, Laurel ran, or tried to run, fighting the drag of her skirts through the grass.

Aidan hurried to her. “I sent Melinda on ahead.” He took her hand. “My cabriolet is this way. I’ll take you home.”

Hunched against the driving rain, she frowned at him from under her sodden bonnet. Assuming how wretched she must feel, he moved with her as quickly as possible across the saturated terrain.

His vehicle stood alone on the empty plateau, abandoned by the others, though he could hear the creaking descent of the last few making their way down to the road. He was relieved to discover that someone had obligingly raised the canvas roof of his cabriolet and the seats had remained relatively dry. The horse stood quietly, oblivious to the change in the weather.

“Would you like to sit in the back?” he asked Laurel, reaching to open the door for her.

She shook her head and climbed up into the front seat. He slid in beside her.

Untying the velvet ribbons beneath her chin, she removed her dripping hat and tossed it onto the seat behind them. “I fear for your upholstery. We are quite soaked through.”

“Never mind the upholstery.” He struggled out of his coat and draped it around her shoulders. “Sorry it’s wet, but it’s at least another layer between you and the draft.”

“No, it’s lovely, thank you. Quite dry inside, actually.” Wiggling her arms into the sleeves, she hugged the garment tighter around herself.

Watching her snuggle inside his sleeves proved oddly arousing, sparking protective, possessive instincts. He wished she were in his arms instead of inside his coat. Hunkering low on the seat, she gave a little shiver, and he felt a nudge of shame. How could he entertain such notions when his first concern should be to whisk her somewhere warm and dry?

“Are you all right?” he asked as he set the horse in motion.

Instead of the brave but quivery reply he expected, she surprised him by turning a beaming face to his. “I feel splendid. You?”

He grinned. “Damned if I don’t feel splendid, too, now you mention it.”

“Thank goodness for the rain, for I’d become most eager to see the end of that picnic. I’d grown intolerably weary of the entire affair.”

The statement piqued his curiosity, and he wondered where she’d been. Needing all his concentration to maneuver the carriage down the rain-slick hillside, he kept the question to himself. When they reached the bottom, the rear panel of Geoffrey Taft’s curricle could be seen lumbering away down the road ahead. It rounded a curve and disappeared from view, leaving him very much alone with Laurel on the rainy, darkening country road.

The branches of the trees on either side of them meshed above their heads, creating a shadowed tunnel that provided a measure of shelter from the rain. Still, breeze-born moisture found its way beneath the oiled canvas roof. Laurel tilted her face and smiled as occasional drops splattered on her cheeks.

Even bedraggled by the wind and rain, she was beautiful, all the more for being so unconscious of it . . . and of the effect she had on him. Her golden hair had fallen from its pins and spilled in damp, unruly spirals down her back. Her lips were parted and moist, her teeth white and gleaming. At that angle, her chin jutted in a show of pert, pretty defiance of the elements, firing in him a swift desire to touch her.
Kiss
her.

He brought the horse to a standstill and dropped the reins on the seat beside him. Claiming Laurel’s chin between his fingers, he turned her head and brushed his lips across her wet ones, darting his tongue over their Cupid’s bow curve. She tasted of rain and heaven, a sweetness he could never grow tired of.

At her sigh of permission, he pressed deeper, losing himself in the suppleness of her lips, in the swirl of their tangling tongues.

His senses came alive with a keen awareness of everything around them: the tapping of the raindrops on the leaves, the luscious fragrance of Laurel’s skin mingling with the dampness of silk and linen, and most of all the fiery heat generated at the juncture of their lips, coursing through him in wave after intoxicating wave of pleasure.

He wanted more of her, yearned to peel away clothing and mold their naked bodies even as their mouths molded one to the other. Yet he found this mere act of kissing, of not touching any other part of her but her lips, intensely erotic. It heightened his anticipation and sharpened his hunger for her to a painful degree.

For now, though, he gently eased away. At first she didn’t move, but sat with her hands folded, her eyes closed, and her swollen lips parted. Then very slowly her golden lashes swept upward and she met his gaze with a look of astonishment.

A perplexed frown followed. “
He
tried to do that, too,” she said. “But it’s an entirely different experience with you.”

Although he’d had every hope of keeping the interlude between kisses a short one, her speech took him aback. “Who tried to do what?”

“Your friend Lord Munster. He tried to kiss me. Can you imagine the cheek?” She gave a soft laugh that made the dimple beside her mouth dance. Looking down at her hands folded primly in her lap, she murmured, “Then again, I suppose you can.”

Abrupt anger sent the blood rushing in his ears. “
When
did he try to kiss you?”

“After we sampled the elixir, just before the rain began. That’s why I walked off. He made me so angry. Such presumption!” She shuddered and drew herself up taller. “Was Melinda worried about me?”

“Yes, but I told her I would find you and bring you home. This does explain why you disappeared.” He scowled at the puddle-dappled road and swore under his breath. “I ought to snap his damned neck.”

It was more than a sentiment. Aidan believed that if Fitz appeared before him, he would indeed wrap his hands around the man’s neck.