Secrets of a Summer Night (11 page)

“That’s obvious,” he said pleasantly, lifting the cup to his lips and draining its contents. “I’m not a peer, and I would make a devil of a husband.” He gave her a shrewd sideways glance. “As for you… despite my sympathy for your cause, I wouldn’t advise making a play for Kendall.”

“My
cause?
” Annabelle repeated, taking immediate offense to the word. “What do you define as my cause, Mr. Hunt?”

“Why, yourself, of course,” he said softly. “You want what is best for Annabelle Peyton. But Kendall doesn’t fall in that category. A match between you and him would be a disaster.”

She turned her head to stare at him with slitted eyes. “Why?”

“Because he’s much too nice for you.” Hunt grinned at her expression. “That wasn’t meant as an insult. I wouldn’t like you half so much if you were a nice woman. All the same, you’re no good for Kendall — nor would he be of much use to you, ultimately. You’d run roughshod over him until his gentlemanly soul was left in a battered pile at your feet.”

Annabelle itched to knock the superior smile from his face — she, who had never before contemplated inflicting physical harm to anyone. Her anger was hardly mitigated by the fact that he was right. She knew quite well that she was far too spirited for a man as docile and civilized as Kendall. But that was none of Simon Hunt’s business… and it wasn’t as if Hunt or any other man was going to offer her a better alternative!

“Mr. Hunt,” she said sweetly, her gaze poisonous, “why don’t you go and—”

“Miss Peyton!” A faint exclamation came from several yards away, and Annabelle saw Lord Kendall’s slight form emerging from the mass of females. He looked disheveled and vaguely harassed as he pushed his way over to her. “Good morning, Miss Peyton.” He paused to straighten the knot of his cravat and adjust his skewed spectacles. “It seems that we were not the only ones who had taken it in our heads to walk this morning.” Giving Annabelle a sheepish glance, he asked, “Shall we make an attempt nonetheless?”

Annabelle hesitated, inwardly groaning. There was little she could accomplish on a walk with Kendall when they would be accompanied by at least two dozen women. One might as well try to have a quiet conversation in the midst of a flock of screaming magpies. On the other hand, she could not very well refuse Kendall’s invitation… even a minor rejection could be off-putting to him, and as a result he might never ask again.

She gave him a bright smile. “I would be delighted, my lord.”

“Excellent. There are some fascinating species of flora and fauna that I would like to show you. Being an amateur horticulturist, I have made a careful study of the vegetation that is native to Hampshire…”

His following words were drowned out as enthusiastic girls surrounded him.

“How I
love
plants,” one of them gushed. “There isn’t a single plant that I don’t find absolutely charming.”

“And the outdoors would be
so
unattractive without them,” another girl enthused.

“Oh, Lord Kendall,” yet another beseeched, “you simply must explain what the difference is between a flora and a fauna…”

The crowd of girls carried Kendall away as if he was being swept out to sea by an irresistible current. Philippa went with them gamely, determined to look out for Annabelle’s interests. “My daughter was probably too modest to tell you about her keen affinity for nature…” she was saying to Kendall.

Kendall threw a helpless glance over his shoulder as he was nudged strongly toward the terrace steps. “Miss Peyton?”

“I’m coming,” Annabelle called back, cupping her fingers on either side of her mouth to make herself heard.

His reply, if he made one, was impossible to hear.

Lazily, Simon Hunt set his empty cup on the nearest table, and murmured something to a servant who was holding his fishing gear. The servant nodded and retreated, while Hunt fell into step beside Annabelle. She stiffened as she noticed him walking side by side with her.

“What are you doing?”

Hunt shoved his hands comfortably into the pockets of his tweed fishing coat. “I’m going with you. Whatever happens at the trout stream won’t be half so interesting as watching you compete for Kendall’s attention. Besides, my horticultural knowledge is sadly lacking. I may learn something.”

Suppressing an ill-tempered reply, Annabelle resolutely followed Kendall and his entourage. They all walked down the terrace steps and took a path that led into the forest, where towering beeches and oaks presided over thick quilts of moss, fern, and lichen. At first Annabelle ignored Simon Hunt’s presence beside her, trudging stonily behind Kendall’s admiring throng. Kendall was being put to great exertion, obliged to help one girl after another to step over what seemed to be minor obstacles. A fallen tree, its circumference no bigger than Annabelle’s arm, became such an overwhelming impediment that they all required Kendall’s assistance to step over it. Each girl became progressively more helpless until the poor fellow was practically obliged to carry the last one over the log while she squealed in pretend-dismay and locked her arms around his neck.

Walking far behind, Annabelle refused to take Simon Hunt’s arm when he offered it and stepped over the log by herself. He smiled slightly as he glanced at her set profile. “I would have expected you to have made your way up to the front by now,” he remarked.

She made a scornful sound. “I’m not going to waste my efforts battling with that group of feather-wits. I’ll wait for a more opportune moment to make Kendall notice me.”

“He’s already noticed you. He’d have been blind not to. The question is why you think that you’ll have any luck getting a proposal out of Kendall, when you haven’t managed to bring anyone up to scratch in the two years that I’ve known you.”

“Because I have a plan,” she said crisply.

“Which is?”

She gave him a derisive glance. “As if I would tell you.”

“I hope it’s something conniving and under-handed,” Hunt said gravely. “You don’t seem to have much success with the ladylike approach.”

“Only because I have no dowry,” Annabelle retorted. “If I had money, I’d have been married years ago.”

“I have money,” he said helpfully. “How much do you want?”

Annabelle gave him a sardonic glance. “Having a fair idea of what you’d require in return, Mr. Hunt, I can safely say that I don’t want a shilling from you.”

“It’s nice to hear that you’re so discriminating about the company you keep.” Hunt reached out to hold back a branch for her. “Having heard a rumor to the contrary, I’m glad it’s not true.”

“Rumor?” Annabelle stopped in the middle of the path and whirled to face him. “About me? What could anyone possibly say about me?”

Hunt remained silent, watching her perturbed face as she worked it out for herself.

“Discriminating…” she murmured. “About the company I keep?… Is that supposed to imply that I’ve had some inappropriate…” She stopped abruptly as the nasty, florid image of Hodgeham sprang into her brain. Hunt had to notice the swift departure of color from her cheeks and the tiny indentations that dug between her brows. Giving him a cold glance, Annabelle turned away, her footsteps measured and heavy on the foliage-padded path.

Hunt kept pace with her, while Kendall’s distant voice drifted back to them, lecturing his avid listeners on the plants they passed. Rare orchids… celandines… several varieties of fungi. The speech was punctuated every few seconds with crows of wonder from his enraptured audience. “… these lower plants,” Kendall was saying, having paused briefly to indicate a haze of moss and lichen covering a hapless oak, “are classified as bryophytes, and require wet conditions to thrive. Were they to be deprived of the woodland canopy, they would surely perish out in the open…”

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Annabelle said shortly, wondering why Hunt’s opinion mattered in the least. Still, it bothered her enough to wonder who had told him the rumor — and specifically, what it had been about. Was it possible that someone had seen Hodgeham visiting her home at night? That was bad. A reputation-destroying piece of gossip like that was impossible to defend oneself against. “And I have no regrets.”

“That’s a pity,” Hunt said easily. “Having regrets is the only sign that you’ve done anything interesting with your life.”

“What are
your
regrets, then?”

“Oh, I don’t have regrets, either.” A wicked glint appeared in his dark eyes. “Not for the lack of trying, of course. I keep doing unspeakable things in the hopes that I’ll be sorry for them later. But so far… nothing.”

In spite of her inner turmoil, Annabelle couldn’t help chuckling. A long branch intersected the path, and she reached out to push it aside.

“Allow me,” Hunt said, moving to hold it back for her.

“Thank you.” She pushed by him, glancing at Kendall and the others in the distance, and suddenly felt a stinging prickle at the inner side of her foot. “Ouch!” Stopping on the path, she hitched the hem of her skirt up to investigate the source of the discomfort.

“What is it?” Hunt was beside her immediately, one large hand grasping her elbow to secure her balance.

“There is something scratchy in my shoe.”

“Let me help,” he said, sinking to his haunches and taking hold of her ankle. It was the first time a man had ever touched any part of her leg, and Annabelle went scarlet.

“Don
’t touch me there,” she protested in a violent whisper, nearly losing her balance as she jerked backward. Hunt didn’t loosen his grip. To keep from toppling over, Annabelle was forced to hold on to his shoulder. “Mr. Hunt—”

“I see the problem,” he murmured. She felt him pluck at the veil of cotton stocking that covered her leg. “You’ve stepped in some prickly fern.” He held something up for her inspection — a sprig of pale, chafflike scales that had worked their way into the cotton weave over her instep.

Flooding with burning color, Annabelle maintained her stabilizing grasp on his shoulder. The surface of his shoulder was astonishingly hard, the plane of bone and resilient muscle unsoftened by any layer of padding in his coat. Her stunned mind was having difficulty accepting the fact that she was standing in the middle of the woods with Simon Hunt’s hand on her ankle.

Seeing her mortification, Hunt grinned suddenly. “There are more bits of chaff in your stocking. Shall I remove them?”

“Be quick about it,” she said in an aggrieved tone, “before Kendall turns around and sees you with your hand up my skirts.”

With a muffled laugh Hunt bent to his task, deftly picking the last of the prickly scales from her stocking. While he worked, Annabelle stared at the place on the back of his neck where the obsidian locks of hair curled slightly against firm, tanned skin.

Reaching for the discarded slipper, Hunt placed it on her foot with a flourish. “My rustic Cinderella,” he said, and rose to his feet. As his gaze passed over the blooming pink surface of her cheeks, friendly mockery flickered in his dark eyes. “Why did you wear such ridiculous shoes for a walk in the woods? I would have thought you’d have the good sense to put on a pair of ankle boots.”

“I don’t have any ankle boots,” Annabelle said, annoyed by the implication that she was some feather-wit who couldn’t select the appropriate footwear for a simple walk. “My old ones fell to pieces, and I couldn’t afford a new pair.”

Surprisingly, Hunt did not take advantage of the opportunity to mock her further. His face became impassive as he studied her for a moment. “Let’s join the others,” he said eventually. “They’ve probably discovered a variety of moss we haven’t yet seen. Or God help us, a mushroom.”

The pinching tightness eased from her chest. “I’m hoping for some lichen, myself.”

That elicited a faint smile, and he reached out to snap off a slender branch that protruded across the pathway. Following gamely, Annabelle picked up her skirts and tried not to think of how nice it would be to be sitting on the manor terrace with a tray of tea and biscuits before her. They reached the summit of a shallow incline and were greeted with a surprising vista of bluebells that blanketed the forest floor. It was like stumbling into a dream, the cerulean haze seeping between the trunks of oak and beech and ash. The smell of bluebells was everywhere, the perfumed air feeling heavy and rich in her lungs.

Pausing by a slender tree trunk, Annabelle curled her arm around it loosely and stared at the stands of bluebells with surprised pleasure. “Lovely,” she murmured, her face gleaming in the shadow cast by the canopy of ancient, interlaced branches.

“Yes.” But Hunt was looking at her, not the blue-bells, and one glance at his expression caused the blood to tingle in her veins. She had seen admiration on men’s faces before, and even something that she had recognized as desire, but never a look that had been this disturbingly intimate… as if he wanted something far more complicated than the mere use of her body.

Uneasy, she pushed away from the tree trunk and made her way to Kendall, who was talking with her mother while the group of girls had scattered to pick wanton armfuls of bluebells. Flower stems were trampled and broken as the feminine marauders gathered up their treasure.

Kendall seemed relieved by Annabelle’s approach, and even more so by the good-natured smile on her face. It seemed that he had expected her to be petulant, as most women would have been when they had been invited on a walk and then been ignored in lieu of more demanding company. His gaze alighted on Simon Hunt’s dark form, and his expression was leavened with a touch of uncertainty. The two men exchanged nods, Hunt looking self-assured, Kendall appearing somewhat wary. “I see that we’ve attracted yet more company,” Kendall murmured.

Annabelle gave Kendall her most dazzling smile. “Of course we have,” she said. “You’re the Pied Piper, my lord. Wherever you go, people follow.”

He blushed, pleased by the bit of nonsense, and murmured, “I hope that you have enjoyed the walk so far, Miss Peyton.”

“Oh, I have,” she assured him. “Although I will admit to having blundered into a patch of prickly fern.”

Philippa gave a soft exclamation of concern. “My goodness… were you injured, dearest?”