Confessions of a Little Black Gown (13 page)

Or rather unbearable,
her tone implied.

Oh, yes, Larken could sympathize with Miss Langley. For while he was only here until he found Dashwell, the chit beside him was trapped. Truly, he pitied her, for his sentence was only temporary. Miss Langley’s would be a lifelong commitment.

He plucked the copy of
Fordyce
out of his pocket and held it up. “I suppose a lesson on meekness and discretion would be lost on Her Grace.”

“Utterly.”

They both laughed and even as he slipped the book back into his pocket, Larken spent a spellbound moment trying his best to forget the whys of his coming to Hollindrake House.

That he was here to find Dashwell.

He glanced down at her. That this miss may have had a treasonous hand in freeing him seemed a rather staggering notion. In many ways she looked like any other English lady, with her simply dressed hair, her fair skin and innocent blue eyes, walking alongside him as if this were an ordinary morning walk.

He glanced around and realized with no small measure of shock that this was how others lived.
Every day. While he’d been mucking about in the mire of Europe and her wars, England had carried on in this bucolic splendor.

He had missed nearly all of his youth—one that was usually spent gambling, and horse racing, and whoring, to restore his family’s lost honor. Had it been worth it? For he’d lost so much time, so much of himself, and now in many ways he was trapped by those years, in the darkness they’d drawn over his heart, his very soul.

He rather felt like the bumbling fool, for to most men this walk across a meadow was a completely normal pastime, but for him, the beauty of it, the glorious peace and simplicity of it left him speechless. He who had spent nearly ten years of his life living in the hell of war. He had forgotten the dear and priceless pleasures of simply living.

Even Brutus seemed to have curbed the worst of his ill behavior and trotted alongside his mistress like a veritable lamb.

Suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, he found himself wishing to discover a way out of all this. For both of them. He and Miss Langley.

Oh, demmit.
Dash was one problem, but however could he save her from one of her sister’s “gallants,” as she put it?

You know how…

Larken paused to hand her over a stile, the stark blue of the sky just as bright as the twinkle in her eyes. The color was enough to make a man forget everything.

To become as treasonous as the lady before him might possibly be.

And for the first time in his life, he knew, as his father before him had known, what it was to have a heart divided. If only he didn’t also know the consequences.

For it had killed his father, as surely as it may hold the same fate for him.

W
hatever had Larken thinking such thoughts?

He had nothing more to do than to look at Miss Thalia Langley to know the answer. This minx’s openness, her complete lack of practiced propriety, had him bewitched.

Even as she prattled on about a visit to the gardens at Versailles with her father and someone by the impossible name of Nanny Jamilla, all he could think of was Tally’s lips.

That was what her sister and Temple called her, wasn’t it? Tally. The nickname fit, for it suggested a winsome spirit, a blithe and almost ethereal quality.

Even her lips held a sort of come-hither tip to them, one that begged to be kissed.

Certainly they begged him, as proved by last night. Good God, he’d behaved like the greenest lad, rolling about in the grass with her…and yet…

After spending the better part of a decade lurking
in the shadows of the war torn Continent, she was a beacon of something he didn’t quite understand, but how it filled him with longing.

And that look she tossed at him with the same ease one might throw a stone into a pond, left him delirious with need, as if she were casting a spell over him with some secret, ancient magic that couldn’t be dispelled with reason or duty.

Cowhanded she might be in the ballroom, but he suspected in the bedchamber, Miss Thalia Langley would move like the most elegant Viennese waltz.

An image of her in that glorious black gown, her bare feet padding across the thick carpet in his room tripped through his fancy. Of that dress falling to the floor and her joining him in his bed, joining with him…

Steady, my good man. Remember, you’re a vicar. Try to behave like one.

Larken stifled a laugh. Quite possibly his masquerade as a vicar was on par with her dancing.

At his side, she glanced up. “Pardon. Did you say something? I fear I was nattering on.”

“Uh, no,” he managed. “Just enjoying the peace of the countryside.” They both looked over the meadow, having climbed the low rise, and were now standing just at the edge of the “wilderness” before they crossed over into the formal gardens that surrounded the duke’s grand house.

The countryside lay out before them in all its pastoral glory, lofty clouds floating by lazily, while the green of the grass was only interrupted by the lines of hedges and the occasional thatch of a crofter’s roof.

“The calm before the storm?” she suggested.

“Something akin to that. I had quite forgotten how I love the country.”

“You make it sound like you’ve been away,” she said, so offhandedly it left him unguarded.

“I—I—” Then he looked down at the intelligence behind those deceptive blue eyes of hers and checked himself.

I have
, he’d almost said.

Careful, Larken
, he admonished silently.
You’re better than this. She’s no more than a chit of what…one and twenty? It isn’t as if she can outwit you.

Care to wager on that?
he could almost hear Temple saying.

Down at his feet he spied a little knot of wildflowers. The same sort that had grown in the meadows near Aunt Edith’s home, where he’d tramped and wandered after his father’s death.

The purple-blue blossoms reminded him of her eyes, so he reached down and plucked several stems, and when he arose, he found her watching him.

Oh, good God. What did he do now? For never in his life had he given flowers to a lady. What the devil had possessed him to pick them in the first place?

The words she’d said earlier…The longing within them still echoed in his heart.
“
…
Or I would find a handful of wild flowers and spend the afternoon with my watercolors trying to capture their hues.”

Her sweet lament had prodded him into doing this ridiculous, impetuous thing. And not knowing what else to do, he jerked his hand out toward her like a foolish youth.

Tally tried to breathe. And not because she’d caught a whiff of his pomade.

Flowers? Her knees started to wobble.

Here she had tried everything and anything she could think of to trip Mr. Ryder up and now he’d left her upended with this simple gesture.

Wildflowers…in his trembling grasp.

No, her shocking revelations about her unconventional upbringing, her denunciation of marriage, not even her story about Mrs. Hutchinson and Mr. Mudgett had ruffled his cool façade.

And yet here he was making this offering of flowers, and quite frankly, appeared to be ready to toss up his accounts over the entire thing.

What sort of man was he?

The sort who kisses like a rake and now wants to charm you with wildflowers…

Tally reached out, their fingers tangling together as she gathered the stems from his grasp. Her gaze jerked up, for his touch, that moment, that brief second as their hands entwined sent a lightning bolt of desire between them.

“Thank you, sir,” she managed, wishing she could be more eloquent, say something…ask him if he had felt that tug as well.

“They are called
Succisa pratensis Moench
,” he said.

“They are?”

“Yes. They even grow in—” his words fumbled to a halt.

Was it her imagination or was he leaning toward her? She searched his eyes for some clue, some hint, eyes so dark and black, she wondered if his
mother had been a Spanish princess or gypsy queen.

Of course, that wasn’t the sort of question one asked a gentleman.

Then again, she suspected he wasn’t entirely a gentleman.

“Grow in where, Mr. Ryder?”

“Um, uh, Northhamptonshire. They grow there as well.”

“I imagine they grow just about everywhere. I believe I remember seeing them in Germany when I was young. I don’t remember what they are called there.”

“Well, you can also call them Devil’s Bit,” he added. “That’s the more common name.” He glanced down at his boots. “I had a tutor for a time who was quite the botanist.”

She smiled and leaned a little bit closer to him. “Mr. Ryder, you are a wealth of contradictions.”

“I am?” He glanced up at her.

“You are,” she said. “You read from Fordyce, yet you—”
kiss like a rake
, was what she wanted to say, but finished instead by adding, “have a rakish nature.”

But he knew what she meant. “Miss Langley, I protest—”

“You shouldn’t. I quite like that part of your character.”

He laughed. “Now it is you who are teasing.”

“I am not. For in addition to those qualities, I find you have not only a romantic side—” she held up her flowers as evidence—“but a practical one as
well.” She glanced down at the flowers in her hands. “
Succisa pratensis Moench
, indeed.”

“Now see here—”

“Oh, don’t bother heaping more of your protests on me. Your secrets are quite safe with me. But I must say…”

“Yes?”

“You quite perplex me.”

He nodded, his hands folding behind his back. “Then we are even in that regard.”

“We are?” Tally tipped her head just so, wishing his rakish nature would give him a nudge.

Kiss me, please kiss me again, so I’ll know if last night was a dream or truly real.

He gazed at her, and she swore he heard her silent plea. “Why yes,” he said, leaning forward, then starting to walk again. Right around her and up the meadow path.

Tally nearly toppled over. But once she regained her footing, she set off after him. “However are we even, Mr. Ryder?”

He paused as she caught up. “For you, Miss Langley, are without a doubt the most perplexing lady I have ever met.”

She came to a tumbling halt before him, and he reached out to steady her. She felt anything but perplexing. Hardly the vixen she’d been last night in his arms. But one glance into his dark eyes and she knew what he meant—he saw her “rakish nature” as well.

“Thank you,” she replied.

They both laughed, and he held out his arm to her,
and for a moment she hesitated before putting her hand on his sleeve and they walked again along the fence, up the hill toward the house.

He might, she thought as she took a sly glance up at him, be quite tolerable with a little help.

A new suit, most definitely. A haircut? She glanced again. No. She rather liked his wayward locks. When they weren’t stinking of…she sniffed ever-so-slightly and ever-so-discretely and was rewarded with
eau de
rancid lard and…what? She sniffed again and gave up.

If only he had a valet.

Tally nearly tripped over her own feet. That was it.
A valet!
Felicity just happened to have a spare one, Claver. The one Felicity had hired and the duke found so very annoying. Poor Claver, with no one to fuss over.

And Claver would never let Mr. Ryder come downstairs smelling like he’d been wallowing with the hogs. Tally bit her lips together to keep from grinning, for something else occurred to her. “Do you need your spectacles to see?”

“Pardon?” he murmured, coming out of whatever reverie she’d just roused him from.

“Your spectacles? Are they necessary?”

He
hemmed
and
hawed
a bit before he admitted, “No. Not unless I’m reading.”

“Are you reading now?” Tally asked, coming to a stop, hands at her hips.

“No, I suppose I’m not,” he said. “But they give me a more vicarly air, or so I’ve been told.”

She studied him. “Yes, but you have very striking eyes. You shouldn’t hide them.”

A sly grin turned his lips. “You think I’m hiding them?”

That and so much more
, she wanted to say, reveling in the ambiguity surrounding him, moving slightly closer to him. Was this a mystery of her imagination or in truth? She didn’t know.

Not that she would with the help of a black affenpinscher, who wove between their legs, barking and bounding up, nearly overturning Tally in his bid to attract her attention.

“Brutus!” she scolded, but her little dog just grinned at her and barked some more, as if he knew exactly what she was about and wasn’t having any of her mischief.

Of all her luck, to have a dog with a conscience.

If that wasn’t enough, the crunch of carriage and wagon wheels coming up the drive tugged her back to solid ground.

“We’d best continue on,” she suggested.

“Ah, yes,” he replied.

This time he didn’t take her hand, and Tally felt the distance between open up again like a gaping yaw.

After a bit, and out of the blue, he spoke, breaking the unnerving silence between them. She might have felt relieved if his question hadn’t held an odd note to it.

“You cousin, Lady Philippa—” he stopped as if he didn’t know how to proceed.

“Yes, what about her?”

“Does she share your distaste of marriage?”

The question sent a ripple of caution down Tally’s spine.

“Yes,” she said, keeping her answer short, but then her tongue got the better of her. “And no.”

“Yes and no?” He shook his head. “Your cousin sounds like a lady in conflict.”

If you only knew…

Then she tried to answer him as diplomatically as she could. She was her father’s daughter after all. “Pippin is opposed to marriage if it is only for marriage’s sake. She’ll only marry for the deepest love.”

“To her unsuitable
parti
?”

Tally looked down at the grass. “No. That isn’t possible.”

“Then I am sorry for her.”

“As am I,” Tally said, the shackles of responsibility tightening around her, coupled with a fear of what was to come as the house now filled with guests. Rather than dwell on that, she said, “Indeed, Pippin and I are writing a play on that very subject right now.
Tears of Helene, or A Lady’s Moral Dilemma
.”

He came to a grinding halt, his boots digging into the gravel. “You write plays?”

“Yes, I think I mentioned it before,” she said, looking up to find Felicity waving at her frantically to hurry along to help her greet everyone.

For the life of her, she couldn’t take another step forward, and it was all she could do not to turn tail and run back to the folly.

“Pippin and I have written several plays,” she managed to say. “In fact one of them is being considered for production by a London company as we speak—though we will not receive public credit for the authorship, for obvious reasons.”

“Of course,” he murmured, his gaze fixed as well
at the arriving guests. There was a calculated light to his eyes—as if he was weighing and measuring each person as they alighted. Checking them off some unknown list.