“Nin-ny,” he repeated. This was another new word to him. “Is this like nan-ny?”
She shook her head with exaggerated exasperation. He liked making her react to him, and it felt very much like pulling a girl’s hair when he was younger.
“Your English is excellent in many places, but how are you so bad at insults?”
“I am not often insulted,” Karl said. Well, not in English, anyway. Any group of mountain guides who spoke the same language were merciless in their teasing, but none of them spoke English either. French, German, Swiss, Tyrolian, yes. All of those. But English? What for?
She huffed out a laugh, and sunlight crept far enough over the trees and the roofline of the inn to catch the reddish glint of her hair. “I find that hard to believe. I could insult you all day.”
“I believe you could,” he said, mildly. He did not want to be insulted, but he was beginning to understand that she spoke many words, but rarely did she intend anything mean-spirited.Her insults were a flirtation, which he would gladly accept. “But I don’t know how you could help a goat give birth.”
“Not the birthing, the babies.”
“Fräulein Brewer,” Karl started, not wanting to exclude her in any way, but also not wanting her to take on a responsibility that she could not possibly upkeep. “I think—”
“I enjoy the way you sayFräuleinto me, but it seems cumbersome, all those syllables.” She pushed her lips into a pout that made his hands twitch and his thighs flex in unwilling response. “Perhaps, when we are alone, you might call me Justine.”
Karl swallowed hard. His thoughtful, prepared mind screamed that this was not appropriate. Why was anyone allowing her to be alone with him? Why had they let him be alone with her? He would have looked around for a chaperone if he could have torn his gaze from her playful brown eyes.
But the rest of him nodded dumbly in agreement and tried out her name on his tongue. “Justine, then. And I am Karl.”
She smiled and repeated his name, and he could have been happy to go deaf after hearing his name on her lips.
**
She knew it was a terrible idea to give him leave to use her first name. Of course it was a terrible idea—she’d thought it up, hadn’t she? If ever she had a reliable trait, it was bad ideas. But he pronounced her name with a softj, like the French, and it made her weak in the knees. In his mouth, her name was beautiful, not at all mannish and workmanlike.
Standing in that morning half-sun, the cold threatening to creep into her hands despite her gloves, she was in paradise. He looked at her with interest, engaged when she teased him, and never lost his temper, no matter what she said.
The situation was almost perverse. They stood in the most gorgeous valley she’d ever seen, the sky gray and cloudy,but still she found it to be more cheerful than any of the innumerable gray days she’d spent in England. And there was this man. After the ballroom legions of men tried to flirt with her, engage her, dance with her, take liberties with her, none had made her feel like this.
It was enough to turn a girl’s head.
“Justine, there you are!” Ophelia called, gathering her woolen shawl around her shoulders.
Justine wanted to sigh. Because if ever there was a person who knew when the worst time to show up was, it was Ophelia. There had been an occasion at finishing school when she’d walked in on Justine and Annabelle Rivers, which had been a short-lived—but educational—romp that year. There was nothing as embarrassing as them both throwing down their skirts as the door opened, and Ophelia walking in, her nose wrinkled.
She loved her best friend, she did. But her timing was shit, if she could be so bold.
“Since we will not be taking our exercise today, I thought it a perfect day to go over routes and sort the gear.” Ophelia looked beautiful, her long gold-blonde hair shining in the low light of the gray day. Justine could be jealous of her friend, whose blue eyes and fair complexion were almost comically the picture of the English ideal. Instead, Justine understood Ophelia’s aloofness, which was actually dreaminess wrapped in aristocratic manners.
And Ophelia had a point. Maps. Routes. Gear. Ugh. The worst. Justine wanted to put one foot in front of the other. She wanted to be pointed in the correct direction and let loose, like a hunting dog, crashing through streams and underbrush. Perhaps not the most flattering of comparisons for herself, but accurate.
