She really was quiteordinary. She was tallish and slender with hair of a nondescript brown and unimaginative style. Her face was pleasing but hardly the sort to turn heads on a crowded thoroughfare—or in a half-crowded ballroom. He would surely not have noticed her at that autumn ball if Lady Darleigh had not asked him to dance with her so that she would not be a wallflower. And what had that request said about Mrs. Keeping? He would not have noticed her on the village street the day before yesterday if it had not been nearly deserted. He would not have noticed her this morning if she had not been... lying among the daffodils.
Looking all willowy and relaxed and... inviting.
Devil take it, she was not ordinary.
He oughtnotto have kissed her. He did not make a habit of kissing respectable females. There were too many dangers involved. And this particular respectable female happened to be the friend of his hostess here at Middlebury Park.
He ought not to have kissed her, especially in his present mood, but he had.
And actually, in retrospect, he knew she had one feature that was definitely out of the ordinary, and that was her mouth. He could have lost himself on it and about it and in it for the rest of the morning and beyond if a bird had not squawked quite unmelodically from a cedar branch and broken his concentration—and if she had not pressed her hands against his shoulders at the same moment.
Dash it all, he should not have kissed her. He would not have noticed her mouth if he had not touched it with his own. And now he craved...
Ignore it.
She ought not to have been there at all, trespassing on private property. Though she had told him, had she not, that she had permission, and shewasthe viscountess’s friend. He had been speechless with rage when he first spotted her. He had walked all that way because he needed to be alone, and there was a damned woman there before him, taking a nap in the middle of the morning and looking damnably picturesque as she did so. He had almost turned on his heel and stalked away before she saw him.
It was, of course, what he ought to have done.
But he had paused first in order to assure himself that she was not dead, even though it was perfectly obvious that she was not. And then he had just stood there, thinking, like a nincompoop, of fairy tales. Of Sleeping Beauty, to be precise.
Anyone who believed his head had mended while he was at Penderris needed hisownhead examined.
He had told her, in so many words, that he would go back there tomorrow. If she was wise, she would barricade herself inside her house tomorrow and every day thereafter until he was long gone from Gloucestershire.
Would she be foolish enough go back?
Would he?
There had been sunshine and springtime and daffodils all about her....
“Flave.” The voice spoke softly.
“Huh?”
“I am sorry to wake you,” Vincent said. “I could tell from your breathing that you were sleeping. But it seemed ill-mannered to leave you alone here without a word.”
He had beensleeping?
“I must have d-dozed off,” he said. “R-Rude of me.”
“Youdidask for a lullaby,” Vincent reminded him. “I must have played it better than I thought. I expect Sophie has gone to the lake by now. I should join her and the others there, but I am going to steal half an hour or so in the nursery instead. I don’t suppose you would care to come with me?”
Flavian was comfortable where he was. The cat was warm and relaxed on his lap. He could easily nod off again. He had not slept much, if at all, last night. But Vince wanted to show off his infant. He would not say it in so many words, of course. He knew very well that infants bored most men.
“Why ever not?” Flavian said, sitting up while the cat got to his feet, jumped down from the sofa, and went to stand by the door, its back arched, its tail pointing straight at the heavens. “Does he look like you?”
“I have been told he does.” Vincent grinned. “But, if memory serves me correctly, babies look simply like babies.”
“L-lead on, Macduff,” Flavian said, cheerfully misquoting.
And who would have imagined, he thought later, that he would spend a good hour of this particular morning, which he had started in such a... savage mood, in the nursery with a baby who looked like a baby and with the child’s father, who behaved toward his son for all the world as if he were besotted? And that Flavian would actually feel soothed by the experience? And that he would read through two children’s books written by Mr. and Mrs. Hunt—Vincent himself and his wife—and illustrated by the latter? And that he would chuckle over the stories and pictures with genuine delight?
“These books are p-priceless, Vince,” he said. “And there are more to come, are there? Whatever gave you the idea of having them published? And how did you go about it?”
“It was Sophie’s idea,” Vincent told him. “Or, rather, it was Mrs. Keeping’s. Have you met her? She is the sister of Miss Debbins, our music teacher. She and Sophie are as thick as thieves. Mrs. Keeping took one look at the first story, which Sophie had written out and illustrated, and remembered that she had a cousin—her late husband’s cousin, actually—in London who she thought would like it. She sent it to him, and it turned out that he is a publisher and did indeed like what he saw and wanted more. So we are famous authors, and you really ought to bow down in homage before us, Flave. He wanted to publish the stories under just my name—Mr. Hunt—to protect Sophie’s sensibilities. Can you imagine anything more asinine?”
Yes, Flavian thought. Yes, he had met Mrs. Keeping three times. Once at the ball last October, once on the village street two days ago, once in the daffodil meadow beyond the cedars this morning. And he had kissed her, dash it all.
