“Good afternoon, Keating,” he said politely.
“Good afternoon, Lord Kirke. I was just having a sniff of the blossoms. I like to read here in the park, when I can.” She did indeed have a book in her hand.
“Any nose-shaped blooms yet?” he asked.
“No, alas. No enormous misshapen ones, either.”
She didn’t say “phallus,” but the word fair hovered silently in the air.
His lips curved in a small, wry but not entirely amused smile. The resulting hot rush along his nerve endings was inevitable and could not be helped.
He knew she had come to suspect her effect on him and was shyly dazzled by it. She was testing it, and testing him.
They were both much safer if he stood where he was.
He moved closer expressly so that he could witness that minute leap of her bodice when her breath caught. Better than a shot of whiskey, that leap.
She was wearing a white day dress. The wind whipped it about her legs and threw the ribbon of her bonnet like confetti.
It was a brutal test of his fortitude not to flick his eyes down to her cleavage, looking for the little heart-shaped birthmark.
They regarded each other wordlessly while the only sound was the wind moving through the greenery around them.
“I didn’t think Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand would mind that I plucked this. Here. Take this with you into battle today.”
She extended a little pale pink sprig of blossom.
After an absurd hesitation, he gently took it from her.
Reflexively, he held it to his nose. His eyes closed fleetingly and involuntarily. It was so vulnerably soft it made his heart contract. It was indeed the color of her lips.
Which were, in all probability, exactly this soft.
His head went light.
He tucked it in his coat pocket. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
When he could speak again.
There was a little silence, during which his feet refused to turn him around so he could leave.
“I just returned from visiting the modiste with Mrs. Pariseau a few moments ago. I thought I’d enjoy the rest of the day outside. Did you know the park is named for Lord Bolt’s mother? It’s rather sweet.” She pointed to the bench.
Her visit to the modiste was, coincidentally, the reason he was up earlier than usual this morning. He’d directed his man of affairs to do something which may yet prove inadvisable. He had struggled with the decision, but in the end, he’d been unable to stop himself.
He read the little plaque on the bench, whichsaidHelene Durand Memorial Park. “I didn’t know. That’s lovely indeed. He must have cared for her very much.”
“My mother is in the churchyard at home. I wondered if she would like a bench with her name on it, too. But it seems as though she’s everywhere I look in our village, somehow, regardless. She might wonder why I decided on a bench, specifically.” She gave a little laugh. “She never did like to sit still for long.”
He was wordless, but his heart contracted almost painfully.
“Do you resemble her?” He hadn’t known he’d intended to ask this question.
“I’m told I have her eyes.”
And there were things he might have said then if he were someone else, and if she was someone else, too, someone less innocent, less vulnerable:Your mother must have been devastating, was one.How hard your father must have fallen for her, was another. Something torrid but wholly sincere. He knew how easy it would be to coax stars from her eyes and nurture the dangerous little flame between them, and he had no bloody business doing simply that because it was better than champagne as a distraction.
“Did you see the little gossip item in the newspaper?” she asked.
