To Distraction (6 page)

When he didn’t immediately reply, she glanced at him. Pacing by her side, he was looking down; she couldn’t read his expression.

“Initially I was with the Guards, but within a month I was seconded to another arm of the services.” He looked up and met her eyes. “I spent most of the last ten years of the war in Paris.”

She stared at him. “
Paris?
But…”

Deverell watched her face blank, watched her work out the implications, then she blinked and refocused.

“You were a
spy?
”

He grimaced, but if she was going to marry him, she needed to know. “The official term is ‘covert operative.’”

To his relief, far from being horrified, she seemed thoroughly intrigued. “What did you do? Did you ferret out secrets and smuggle them to Whitehall?”

His lips quirked. “Not often—that wasn’t my brief.” He hesitated, then went on, “Prior to enlisting, quite aside from the usual education—Eton and Oxford—courtesy of my father I had an excellent grounding in business affairs. It was his forte—supply and demand on a national scale. Knowing how to influence transport, and the logistics of moving large quantities of commodities from one side of the world to the other. The family fortune derived from such enterprises.”

They continued along the path; he grasped her elbow to steady her over an exposed root. “Because of my peculiar knowledge and the fact that I speak fluent French and could pass myself off as, if not French, then from one of France’s far-flung colonies, I was a natural to infiltrate that arm of French business crucially involved in keeping France—the state—afloat.”

He glanced at her and saw she was truly interested. “For instance, it’s difficult to keep an army supplied with rifles if pig iron doesn’t arrive at the ports that serve the foundries. Disrupting vital cargoes at critical times can cause significant damage to any war effort.”

“How…enthralling. It must have been so—” She broke off, a frown tangling her brows. After a moment, she said, “I was going to say it must have been exciting, and I suspect in
one way it was, but it must also have been very dangerous.” She looked at him. “Ten years is a long time.”

Nodding, he looked down, remembering every one of those years. “One had to be very careful, always on guard against giving yourself away.”

The path curved around and up the hill, spiraling about the nearly conical mound. Here and there clumps of trees shaded the way, providing cool spots in which to linger and appreciate the vistas that opened up as they climbed ever higher.

Phoebe paused in one such spot, looking out across the patchwork of fields dappling the downs; he halted beside her. At this elevation, a light breeze skipped and swooped, flirting with tendrils of her hair that had slid from the knot on the top of her head to caress her exposed nape.

His gaze rested on that sensitive skin; as if she felt it, she turned and met his eyes. Her own had widened; once again, he knew she’d stopped breathing.

After a moment, she said, “I’ve heard that your cattle are prime ’uns, from which I infer that now you’re back on this side of the Channel, you’ve taken up the reins of the life you would have led had the war not intervened.”

He laughed, shortly, as they started walking again. “Would that that were so, but the unexpected acquisition of both title and large estate changed my destiny.” He thought, then shrugged. “Truth be known, even if my distant cousin hadn’t unexpectedly died, I doubt I could have settled back to fashionable life. Ten years of tension and action tend to alter one’s tastes.”

Even without looking, he sensed he’d puzzled her, that he wasn’t fitting the mold she’d imagined he would.

“What do you think of the Regent? Have you met him?”

“Prinny? Yes. I can’t say I’m enamored.”

That made her smile. She continued peppering him with questions, outwardly random, yet he sensed she was searching for some level of understanding, of comprehension, some framework within which she could place, measure and judge him. Nothing loath, he played her game, admitting, when she pressed him on what other horses he owned, that collecting prime horseflesh was one of the fashionable vices in which he indulged.

He waited for her to ask which other fashionable vices he was prey to, but while the thought definitely occurred, she shied from being quite so impertinently direct.

A pity. He’d had an excellent answer prepared.

Despite outward appearances, he wasn’t like others of his kind. Phoebe couldn’t escape that conclusion, or the fact that learning more about him had done nothing to lessen her infuriating infatuation. Quite the opposite. She now felt an entirely unhelpful curiosity about him—about what was important to a man like him, one with his peculiar history, about what drove him.

At least curiosity was a great deal more manageable than infatuation, and much easier to own to and excuse.

By the time they reached the folly, a small circular lookout perched on the hilltop, she’d learned enough to accept that she’d do well to wipe her mental slate clean of all preconceived notions where he was concerned. That, of course, left her wondering about his words on the terrace—had he meant them as she’d interpreted them? If so…

Deverell followed her onto the circular wooden platform beneath the fanciful carousel-like roof. Painted white, the structure was in good repair. Phoebe walked to one side; gripping the railing, she looked out.

Halting in the center of the floor, he grasped the moment to observe her—her stance, the way she moved—and what
that told him. In one way, she was easy to read; characteristically direct and decisive, she projected her intentions clearly. Yet her motives, the reasons behind her decisions and the actions that flowed from them, remained largely hidden. Despite his facility for reading others, what Phoebe was thinking remained a mystery.

And she was sufficiently unusual to make relying on extrapolating from his extensive experience of other ladies unwise.

For one of his ilk, that was a trifle disconcerting. Managing—manipulating—a woman whose thought processes were screened from him was a significantly more difficult task. One fraught with the potential for failure, yet with Phoebe he didn’t intend to fail.

But with her he was reduced to guessing. He didn’t
think
she’d changed her mind over entertaining any marriage proposal. He didn’t
think
she’d yet decided to take up his alternative approach to persuading her into matrimony, his suggestion of an informal relationship, but he thought—
hoped
—she was considering it.

He stirred and walked to her, halting with just a foot between them, behind her and to one side. The view before them was magnificent; they looked down on the manor in its grounds, and far beyond to field and river, to gently undulating hills that stretched away to the purple-tinged horizon.

Dipping his head, he glanced at her face. He hid a smile at the light frown etched between her brows; she wasn’t thinking of the fields and river.

They were very much alone yet theoretically in public, the perfect setting in which to indulge in a little persuasion.

His lips curved; straightening, he gave in to temptation. Lifting one hand, with one finger he touched—just touched—the fine curls caressing her nape. The silky curls brushed her skin; he didn’t.

She shuddered. Her hands gripped the rail more tightly, then she dragged in a breath and shot him an irritated glance. “Stop that!”

He met her gaze only briefly, then returned his attention to her nape. “Why?” Before she could answer, he looked back and trapped her gaze. “Didn’t you like it?”

For a telltale moment, honesty held her tongue, but then she freed it and her blue eyes snapped. “No!”

He grinned but lowered his hand. And shifted fractionally closer, tilting his head so their gazes were closer to level, so he could study her face and she could study his.

She eyed him warily, her grip on the rail rigid.

He smiled genuinely. “Breathe.”

She blinked, and did. Rather tightly.

“If you faint, I’ll have to catch you, hold you—perhaps even carry you back to the house.”

Her eyes widened and locked with his. “I don’t faint.”

He didn’t answer; instead, he slowly lifted his hand and cupped her nape. Lightly, not forcefully, but that was all it took. She shivered again, unable not to, unable to quell her reaction to his touch.

The realization sent a shaft of unadulterated lust spearing through him.

She closed her eyes, tried to stiffen her spine; as his fingers and palm firmed, she dragged in a breath and held it.

Every instinct he possessed urged him to tighten his grasp and draw her to him, draw her lips to his and simply take possession.

His muscles tensed to do so; he shifted a fraction nearer.

Her lids flew up; her eyes locked with his.

He froze. Confusion tinged with a species of fear ran riot in her lovely eyes, swamping her burgeoning desire.

The sight stopped him as nothing else could have; he instantly eased his hold, forced the muscles in his arm to
relax. He didn’t take his palm from her nape; instead, he lightly, soothingly stroked, as he would a skittish horse.

The analogy was apt; studying her eyes, he knew—could see—that he was going too fast. She was barely breathing; once again she was inwardly quivering. She was unawakened, untouched; she was immobilized by his nearness—if she’d been free, she would have bolted.

She was twenty-five; he couldn’t believe she’d never been kissed. Yet this degree of reaction, of panic…

Her reaction to him was unusually intense, as was his reaction to her. While that attracted him even more, perhaps to her it was too much, too soon. They’d only set eyes on each other yesterday.

He wasn’t a patient man, but she wasn’t just any woman.

Reining in his impulses, he leaned closer. She tried to stiffen, to pull back, but that only made her feel his restraining hand at her nape all the more. She tensed, but he didn’t try to kiss her. Instead, he touched his lips to the sleek hair above her ear.

“Stop fighting this.” He waited while the whispered words sank into her mind, until the realization he wasn’t going to force a kiss on her allowed her to ease her locked muscles. “Stop fighting me. I can teach you more about pleasure than you can imagine.”

She frowned as he drew back. She opened her mouth.

“And don’t bother telling me you’re not interested in pleasure.” He caught her eyes. “With the type of pleasure we’re discussing, everyone is.”

They walked back to the house; Phoebe’s heart pounded the entire way. She felt as if she’d escaped being devoured by a dangerous beast, only to have that same dangerous beast dog her heels every step of the way back to safety.

The beast wasn’t him; it was what flared between them.
As they crossed the lawn and the house rose before them, she was perfectly clear about that.

She didn’t know what to make of him, but what flared between them was more unnerving than he was.

Much more disconcerting than he was. For reasons she couldn’t elucidate, she—her female mind—increasingly viewed him as…interesting. He’d proved to be other than she’d thought, and her curiosity was piqued. And while what flared between them was beyond unsettling, when he’d seen she hadn’t wanted to be kissed, he’d stopped.

And hadn’t.

What shook her to the core was that at the time, at the precise instant he’d drawn back, she—some wild, incomprehensible, self-destructive part of her—hadn’t wanted him to stop. Had wanted him to disregard her leaping fear, brush aside her instinctive panic and…

And metaphorically take her hand and teach her all she didn’t know.

All he’d offered, quite specifically, to teach her.

Which was surely madness. A dreadfully tempting madness.

She marched up the steps to the terrace, then, dragging in as large a breath as she could past the constriction banding her chest, swung to face him. “Thank you for your company, my lord.”

He met her eyes, his gaze direct, a certain cynicism in the green.

Before she could incline her head and leave him, a bell sounded from inside.

His lips twitched. With a graceful gesture, he waved to the French doors. “That will be luncheon. Shall we join the others?”

She inwardly cursed, nodded, still tense, and swept through the door.

If asked, she would have said that the last thing she needed at that moment was to be surrounded by a chattering horde. As it transpired, pretending to listen to the gay outpourings of the others back from their ride to the ruins gave her time to regain her equilibrium. Many of said outpourings were directed at Deverell, their aim to make clear how much excitement he’d missed. She quelled a snort and kept her eyes on her plate; he was, of course, seated next to her.

As before, his nearness ruffled her senses, but the effect wasn’t actually distressing. It was…not calming, certainly not soothing…pleasant, insidious, unrelenting temptation was the best description she could muster. She might be able to ignore it, if she put her mind to it, but her mind seemed to have other ideas.

Among them dwelling on the intriguing fact that in that fraught moment at the lookout, even though he hadn’t needed to, he had indeed stopped. He’d had absolute control and had exercised it; she found that infinitely fascinating.

Unfortunately once lunch ended, it was impossible to escape. The others had organized their archery contest; everyone adjourned to the back lawn, sitting in the shade under the trees while the butts were set up under Peter Mellors’s and Edgar Thomas’s direction.

More chairs had been brought out; all the ladies had seats. Deverell lounged on the lawn between Audrey’s chair and the one Phoebe occupied. She pretended to be attending to Georgina and Leonora chatting on her other side, while she listened to Deverell tell Audrey about the view from the folly. To her relief, Audrey didn’t ask who had gone there with him, and he omitted to volunteer that information.

Then Edgar clapped his hands, drawing their attention.

“Right now, everyone!” He grinned around at the assem
bled company. “We’ve divided you into groups of four, the winner of each heat to progress to the next.” He proceeded to read out the rules they’d decided on, then the names in each group. “We’ll have the ladies’ heats first, then the gentlemen’s, then follow with the final rounds.”