TheWifeTrap (14 page)

“What in the world happened to you? Did you decide to take a swim
in your clothes and boots?”

Chilled and miserable, Darragh looked daggers at his friend
Lawrence McGarrett. In Gaelic, he made a short but crude suggestion about where
Lawrence could put his questions, then stomped toward the staircase.

Lawrence laughed and shook his carroty head. “ ’Tis the truth and
nothing but that I’ll be having out of you later, my lad,” he called after
Darragh. “Don’t imagine I won’t.”

And Lawrence did, slowly prodding the tale out of Darragh over a
delicious supper of succulent roast lamb, buttery mashed potatoes and tender
braised leeks.

“Tossed you in the pond, did she?” Lawrence chuckled, motioned for
the footman to clear away their empty plates.

Relaxed and pleasantly warm again thanks to a dry suit of clothes
and the healthy fire that crackled in the dining room fireplace, Darragh leaned
back in a comfortable Chippendale chair. He downed a last swallow of wine, then
placed the fine, Waterford crystal goblet on the elegant linen-clad table.

“She sounds a wildcat, that one,” Lawrence said.

Darragh hadn’t told his friend everything, but enough. More than
enough. “She’s spirited, I’ll grant you that.”

“Well, ’tis to be expected from an Irishwoman. I’d enjoy meeting
her, this fire-breather of yours. Tell me now, is she redheaded?” Lawrence
grimaced, stuck a finger toward his head. “Cursed with the same flaming thatch
as myself?”

Darragh reached for the crystal decanter in the center of the
table and poured himself another draught of wine. Setting the stopper back in
with a light
clink,
he raised his goblet and drank.

At length, he returned his glass to the table. “She’s blond. Pale,
golden blond and pretty as the first rays of a new sun. But she isn’t Irish.
’Tis English, she is.”

Lawrence frowned, his eyebrows meeting like a pair of bright flags
in the middle of his forehead. “Oh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, oh?”

“You know very well what it means. English girls are nothing but
trouble, especially the aristocratic ones. I assume she is an aristocrat.”

Darragh thought of Lady Jeannette and her pampered, self-indulgent
ways. “Oh, aye, she’s as aristocratic as they come. Merriweather’s cousin and
the daughter of an English earl. Some Society scandal back home brought her here,
so I understand.”

“Even more reason, then, to put an end to these games the pair of
you have been playing. Why didn’t you tell me from the first she was
Merriweather’s cousin? Are you knocked in the head, boy-o? You know how
na
Sasanaigh
feel about Irish lads, even ones with good money and fine old
titles.”

“Well, I don’t see the problem. It’s not as if I’m in any danger
of turning sweet on the girl.”

Lawrence snorted and reached for the decanter. “Are you not? She’s
all you’ve talked about the whole evening long.”

“At your insistence.”

“And then there’s that look in your eyes.”

“What look?”

“
That
look. The one you get when you’re halfway to
falling in love with a lass. It’s there staring back at me even as we speak.”

Darragh bristled, jaw tightening to the consistency of rock.
“There is no look, only the gleam from one too many glasses of wine.” He raised
his goblet, downed what remained. “And if you’re suggesting I’m in love with
the girl, you’re crazy as old man Maguire, who says he takes tea every Sunday
evening with the little people. She’s a beautiful lass, but love…” He broke
off, gave a dismissive grunt. “I’ve no love for that one. Most days she’s
naught but a thorn in my side.”

Lawrence looked plainly unconvinced. “If you say so. I just don’t
want to see you lured in then left with a shattered heart. Marry a good Irish
girl as your mam told you to and leave that one alone.”

“Not to worry, Lawrence, my lad. I’m heart whole and there’s
nothing over which you need be worried. Work will start again as usual
tomorrow, and the boys’ll move along at a grand pace. We’ll be done and gone
before the first flakes of snow hit the ground. And she’ll be gone back to
England.”

An odd melancholy he refused to consider settled over him.
Inevitable, he realized, that one of these days Jeannette Rose Brantford would
be traveling back home, setting not only a country but an entire sea betwixt
them.

Gratefully, he let Lawrence change the subject. The two of them
talked of sport and horses over bites of cheese and fruit, savoring robust,
ruby-hued port out of small glasses until sleep could no longer be avoided.

Yet Darragh didn’t sleep, lying awake in his bed long after he
should have found himself lost deep in the world of dreams.

All he could think of was Jeannette.

Lawrence’s fault, he decided as he punched an irritated fist into
his feather pillow and rolled over onto his side.

Love Jeannette?

Impossible.

Yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her, especially the kisses
they had shared earlier today. Like the creamiest spun honey, they were, those
kisses, sweet and warm and rich. If he was honest with himself, he had to
confess he’d never known finer. She might be flighty and willful, but damn if
she didn’t know how to make a man’s head reel.

And her mouth. Sweet Mary, she had some of the softest lips he’d
ever touched. Pink and silky smooth as tender young rose petals, her skin every
bit as fragrant. He could spend all the day long with his nose pressed to that
skin, drinking in her luscious feminine scent.

He closed his eyes and could nearly smell her, taste her, feel her
again pressed close inside his arms. Desire pumped through him, blood rushing
to all sorts of parts best left dormant. Especially considering the fact that
kisses were the best he could honorably expect to enjoy from Lady Jeannette
unless he wished to offer her a wedding ring. And he had absolutely no
intention of doing any such thing.

Up until now, he hadn’t had the time nor the inclination to
consider taking a wife—he’d been far too busy studying and traveling and
concentrating on doing what was necessary to rebuild his family fortune. Not
that he’d been bereft of feminine company over the years. No indeed, far from
it. But the kind of women he dallied with knew what she was about and didn’t
expect promises of undying love and commitment.

When he did marry, it certainly wouldn’t be to a coddled English
beauty who thought herself better than most of humanity. Instead he wanted a
gentle lass, sweet-tempered and caring, simple in spirit and expectation, who
would fill his life with happiness and love. Not some wild-willed vixen who
would see to it he never knew another moment’s peace for all the rest of his
days.

Still, he had to admit a life spent with Lady Jeannette would
never be dull or boring. Excitement and surprise would lie around each corner
while passion smoldered hot beneath the surface, ready to burst into flames at
any time of the day or night. He groaned at the explicit images that flashed
through his mind, shifting restlessly against the sheets as his body responded
in unsatisfied demand.

Lord, what if Lawrence was right? What if he was getting in too
deep and this hunger he felt was more than a case of simple lust? What if these
games he and the Little Rosebush were playing amounted to more than juvenile
tricks and pranks? What if, heaven forbid, they were part of some sort of
elaborate mating ritual?

He climbed out of bed and paced across his bedroom to the window,
open to let in the night breeze. He stared out, barely aware of the moonlight spread
like a shimmering river over the night-blackened lawn. An owl hooted somewhere
in the distance.

Mad, he was, crazy mad to be entertaining such nonsensical
delusions. Lady Jeannette delighted in testing and challenging him. And he did
a fine job reestablishing the limits. Even now he could cheerfully strangle her
for all the trouble she’d caused him today with the missing workmen’s tools,
not to mention the unexpected swim she’d sent him on in the Merriweathers’
pond.

He growled beneath his breath, then had to smile and shake his
head at her outrageous antics.

Yet Lawrence made a good point. Playing these games with a girl
like her was akin to striking a flint near a pile of oil-soaked tinder. If he
kept it up long enough, wasn’t he sure to end up burned? Better to withdraw
before it became too late.

He gazed sightlessly out into the night for several more long
minutes. By the time he returned to his bed, he was resolved to focus on the
task before him, finish his work and push a certain fiery young miss from his
mind.

After the job was done, he would leave and make sure he didn’t let
himself look back.

Chapter Nine

Jeannette tread cautiously over the next couple days, remaining
indoors rather than risking a fresh encounter with O’Brien. He’d looked none
too happy about his impromptu swim the other afternoon. It had been worth it,
though, to see his look of stunned panic seconds before he’d splashed like a
floundering trout into the pond. Too bad she hadn’t been able to share the
humorous tale with her cousins, but Bertie and Wilda simply would not
understand.

Nor did they fully understand the tale of the “missing” tools,
wondering aloud how such a strange circumstance could have occurred. Amid much
puzzlement and speculation at the dinner table, Jeannette listened to her
cousins discuss the matter.

Cousin Bertie recounted that when he questioned O’Brien, the
architect had apparently shrugged and claimed to be at a complete loss.

“Makes no sense at all, does it now?” O’Brien had remarked. “No
accounting for the odd peculiarities of people, particularly thieves and
pranksters. ’Course, it could be the work of faeries, as the men say. Crafty,
mischievous imps, faeries are. Any way you look on it, ’tis a pure mystery.”

Faeries indeed, she had marveled with an amused half smile. Much
as it galled her, she admitted a reluctant admiration for O’Brien and his
highly inventive explanations. He’d certainly managed to get her cousins to
consider the possibility of faerie folk as tool thieves, despite the fact that
Bertie prided himself on being a man of science.

Far more superstitious, Wilda had discussed the event with her
housekeeper, Mrs. Ivory, a forthright, energetic Irishwoman, who’d convinced
her to have the servants set out a glass of milk and a small plate of victuals
each night. The offering, the housekeeper maintained, was a well-known way to
appease the Good People or any other restless spirits that might be roaming the
land.

Now, days later, Jeannette snorted at such nonsense, shaking her
head as she moved her drawing pencil over the piece of sketch paper balanced
against her updrawn knees. With the fields wet from a steady morning rain, now
thankfully ceased, she’d decided to stay inside again.

Tucked into a window seat in one of the guest bedrooms, she sat
snug and comfortable, enjoying a stellar view of the construction site below.
The workers were again hard at their labors, their rhythm reestablished as
though the interruption over the missing tools had never occurred at all.

She had feared after that first morning that O’Brien would
retaliate by having his men begin work extra early. But she’d awakened to the
sound of their toil at seven, realizing to her chagrin that she’d been dreaming
of O’Brien’s kisses.

Her pencil slowed, her skin tingling anew at the memory before she
shook off the phantom sensations. No, she admonished herself, she was not going
to spend the afternoon dwelling upon Darragh O’Brien’s kisses. His delectable,
delicious, pulse-pounding kisses that occupied her thoughts in daylight and
plagued her dreams at night.

Despite every attempt, she could not contain those dreams, amorous
fancies that left her restless and edgy, longing for a male touch that was not
there. Any other unmarried lady of her class would have cringed in
mortification to wake and find the sheets twisted around her limbs, heat
burning high in her cheeks and low in her belly. Yet secretly she couldn’t deny
a certain pleasure, her nocturnal wanderings rousing her passions in ways she
had never thought to explore. Still, what she craved at night had to be held
strictly at bay in her waking life. To succumb in a dream was one thing. To do
so in reality was something else altogether.

Through the window, O’Brien passed into view below. His
pantherlike stride catching her eye, hints of auburn glinting in his dark
chestnut hair like bits of copper in the sun.

Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she followed his
progress across the lawn to the high, thin table where he spread out a long,
familiar-looking sheath of parchment. His plans.

He consulted something on one of the pages before glancing up to
call an order across to a pair of his men.

As usual, he was dressed in ordinary attire. Leather boots, plain
brown trousers, a simple green cotton waistcoat, white neckerchief and shirt
that he scandalously left unbuttoned at the throat and sleeves. He’d rolled
them up again, those sleeves, revealing the solid muscles of his forearms, the
intriguing sprinkle of dark, masculine hair on their length.

She wet her lips and sighed, then caught herself in the act.

Irritated, she pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and set her
pencil in motion. Slowly over the next half hour, O’Brien’s likeness came to
life. Starting as simple lines and dots and flourishes, the picture evolved
into what she decided was a very competent sketch of the man in her sight.

The seductive devil in her sight.

Yes, exactly, she judged, an impish quirk spreading over her lips.

The expressions on his men’s faces should have warned him. That and
the laughter trailing him the next morning as Darragh walked onto the
construction site.

He called out the usual round of good mornings and got smirks
along with their replies. Smirks and stares. Long expectant stares, as though
the men were watching and waiting for an explosion of some kind to occur.
Perplexed, he glanced around, found nothing at all out of the norm.

He was striding along the new north wall a minute later when he
saw it, propped atop the first level of scaffolding like some rude crimson
smear.

Now it was his turn to stare.

Hell’s teeth.
Lady Jeannette had painted him as Satan,
and done a damned fine job of it too. Putting her artistic skills to work, she
had accurately captured his likeness, leaving no room to mistake his identity.
His eyes she’d turned from blue to red, backlighting his dark hair and the
horns above with an evil golden glow that gave the effect of smoldering fire.
She’d colored the rest of the paper in shades of red and black so he looked as
if he’d just ascended from the furnace pits of Hades itself. Humorously,
though, she’d tucked a pencil behind one horn and set his architectural plans
afire, leaving him to use his forked tail and clawed hands to tamp out the
flames.

Minx.
What did she think she was about? Was she
deliberately trying to anger him? Or was this merely a new salvo, her way of
gaining his attention in their unfettered game of give-and-take.

He suspected it was a little bit of both.

But would he take the bait?

Suddenly he noticed the hush, almost deafening in its volume as
every one of his men waited to see what he would do.

Striding toward the picture, he plucked it down off its lofty
perch and studied it. Suddenly the absurdity of the piece struck him and he
astonished them all—including himself—by tossing back his head on a long,
hearty laugh.

“A fair likeness, wouldn’t you say?” he called out as he turned.
“Especially the tail and the horns. Fair warning, though, that I’ll use them on
the pack of you, together with the pitchfork, if you don’t get straight back to
work.”

Laughter rumbled in a wave from man to man. Rory approached and
gave him a good-natured slap on the shoulder before consulting with him about
more serious matters.

Once done, Darragh crossed to the small wooden table where he kept
his architectural renderings and plans. Setting down the painting, he covered
it with a large rectangle of paper, then did his best to forget about its
exasperatingly lovely creator.

In a sad funk, Jeannette sat in a chair and watched a trio of
raindrops chase one another across her bedroom window. She sighed against her
boredom, this afternoon as dull as many of the others she had endured over the
past four weeks, with nothing but her cousins and her own solitary pursuits to
entertain her.

Because of the rain, the building crew had gone home for the
afternoon, the house silent except for the drum of droplets on the roof, and
the drip and gush of water flowing through the gutters.

Of Darragh O’Brien, she saw virtually nothing these days. Not that
she wished to see him, she strove to assure herself. She was relieved he had
chosen to voluntarily absent himself from her life, really she was. But her
encounters with the man had helped to pass the time and his unexplained
withdrawal had left a noticeable void.

She remembered back to the morning when she left her painting of
Darragh,
the Devil
for his workers to see. Awakening early, she had rushed to one
of the guest bedroom windows, where she would have a bird’s-eye view of his
reaction. At first, she had laughed along with his men as each one of them came
forward in turn to view the caricature. Brimming with mischievous delight, she
had waited for O’Brien to arrive, glimpse her latest handiwork and explode.

But beyond an initial burst of laughter and a few teasing
comments, he’d shown little reaction. Perhaps, she had thought at the time, he
was saving up his true feelings for a tête-à-tête with her later that day or
the next.

So she had waited, expecting him to seek her out. Only he had not,
leaving her to grow increasingly annoyed and deflated as each day drifted
monotonously one into the other. He hadn’t even let Vitruvius run loose,
keeping the dog on a lead so the half-grown, house-sized lummox couldn’t molest
her in the gardens or in the fields as she came and went during her afternoon
painting sessions. Not that she wished to see the canine monster, since she’d
been slobbered over and ravaged by enough dirty paw prints to last a lifetime.

But master and dog kept well away.

She could have sought O’Brien out, but what excuse would she have
used? After the afternoon of misery to which he’d subjected her as punishment
for hiding his tools, she had decided the prudent choice would be to withdraw
from that particular fight. Much as it galled her to have the construction
racket begin so early, she realized the impossibility of ever getting her way.

That alone should have sparked a visit from him, if for no other
reason than to gloat. But as the days progressed, one week flowing into two,
and two into three, she realized he had lost interest. In their sparing and in
her, it would seem.

Lowering as it was to admit, she ventured on occasion into the far
guest room to watch for a glimpse of him. But she never lingered long, telling
herself it was only tedium and curiosity that drove her there.

It wasn’t as though she harbored tender feelings for the man. How
could she, considering the two of them came from completely separate worlds?
She was an English lady of good breeding and fine family. He was an ordinary,
middle-class Irishman with nothing to recommend him, in spite of his obvious
skills as an architect.

Yet none of that really mattered, since she had no interest in
encouraging a flirtation. Once she returned to England, she would marry and
marry well. So really, O’Brien was doing her a favor removing himself from her
sphere.

He was too busy with his work, likely that was the reason she no
longer encountered him, the new edifice demanding a full measure of his time
and talent. And he did possess talent. Even she, who had little interest in
such matters, could appreciate the beauty of what he was creating, the
magnificent wing daily taking shape before her eyes.

Outwardly designed to remain in harmony with the rest of the
structure, the recently finished exterior retained the classical lines of the
Palladian style, creating an unbroken transition from old to new. To anyone
unaware of the fire, Brambleberry Hall would appear as if it had stood unscathed
through all the years of its existence.

The interior, over which the workmen were now busy laboring, was
to employ a more modern design, with an emphasis on functionality and comfort.
O’Brien had laid out each new room for a specific use, made to suit the lives
of its owners while still maintaining an atmosphere of quiet country elegance.