“I don’t suppose you can climb any higher than I did,” she said. “You’re too heavy to risk the higher branches.”
His eyebrows continued to look offended. “I am more than a head taller than you, Mrs.—Miss—ah—” He abandoned his futile attempt to call her by any kind of name, and tried again. “If I stand on the same branch that you did, I’ll have a significant vertical advantage. Tell me what to look for.”
He peeled off his jacket, loosened his cravat, and put one shiny boot to the lowest branch.
Her head spun slightly, which she told herself was from his inexplicable behavior and not from the sight of his posterior, put in high relief by the absence of his jacket and the tautness of his trousers as he bent his leg.
“Tell me if you can see a river,” she managed. “That would be the Cleddau Ddu. Oh, or a bridge! And if you can see the ruins of an old motte and bailey castle, I’ll know precisely where we are.”
He began to climb. The second limb creaked alarmingly beneath his weight.
Winnie’s mouth felt dry. “Do you know,” she heard herself say, “I’m not entirely certain this is necessary.”
His voice floated down, well above her now. “I’m fine.”
Certainly he was finenow.But what if the branch cracked beneath his weight?
What if shekilledhim? My God, they’d think she cooked up this plot to inherit his fortune, for heaven’s sake. If she had no desire to be a countess, she certainly had even less desire to be adowagercountess.
And, too, she—
She liked him. She liked the way his ears had gone pink when she’d ordered him from her bedchamber. She appreciated, in some bone-deep and unexpected way, how he had tackled the problem of their hypothetical marriage without once blaming her—though the situation was without question her fault. She admired the way he spoke to his groom and all the villagers they’d encountered, free from snobbery or condescension.
“Come down,” she said, more firmly this time. “I can look for this clearing another time.”
“It’s all right. I’m nearly there now.”
There was another creak, louder and more ominous. The branches thinned nearer to the top of the elm—Winnie had seen it herself.
“No,” she said. There was a dreadful feeling in her chest, a hot prickling worry, a sort of guilty remorse. “I’ve—I’ve erred. This isn’t lady’s bedstraw. I’ve made a mistake. It’s—it’s—” She tried to think. “Woad.” Another plant she used for dye, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Why do they call it that?” His deep voice sounded farther away now.
She gritted her teeth. “Woad?”
“Lady’s bedstraw.”
Creak.And then a soft pop, like the cracking of wood. She blanched. “In medieval times, they used it to stuff mattresses,” she said. Her voice had taken on a faint, high-pitched desperation. “It smells different when dried. Less sweet. Keeps away fleas and bedbugs. Sometimes women would tuck it into their bodices too. It’s said to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Increases virility. Causes sudden and uncontrollable—er—sexual desire—”
She clamped her lips shut, but it was far, far too late.
“Bollocks,” she heard Lord Warren say. And then she heard a large booted foot scraping against bark, followed by a cacophony of splitting wood, rustling leaves, and blistering oaths.
Winnie didn’t think. She leapt forward toward the base of the tree, threw up her arms, and tried to catch him when he fell.
Chapter 4
Six days later, Spencer sat across from his so-called wife in the carriage and tried not to look at her face.
Or, more specifically, at the black eye he’d given her when his elbow had connected with her cheekbone during his abrupt descent from the elm.
The livid bruise had faded more quickly than he would have expected. It was now a sort of yellowish-green, the color of celery that had been roughly handled. The mark had certainly dissipated faster than his memory of the event.
When his foot had slipped from the branch—a situation he would have liked to blame entirely upon Mrs. Halifax but unfortunately was his own damned fault—he’d mostly felt a spike of embarrassment. But when he’d realized she had hurled herself beneath him, he’d felt nothing but cold terror.
Had she done it for him? To try to rescue him?
It seemed ridiculous. She was probably half his weight. If he hadn’t clutched her in his arms and rolled, he’d have crushed her.
