Page 4 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

She stared into those dark eyes that stared right back, into her, through her. He was someone she wasn’t scared to let know her.

“Well played. But I’m afraid not.” She shook her head, underscoring her point.

“Hang on. How am I to know you’ll tell me if I do get it right and you won’t just tell me I have gotten it wrong even if I haven’t?”

She looked at him defiantly. “I am a lady of quality, and honor bound to tell the truth.”

He let out a small laugh. “But on the other hand, are you not also honor bound to protect your reputation?”

She wanted to throw caution straight into the wind, into the fire if need be, and say damn her reputation. The sound of his laugh incited a very visceral reaction from her more intimate and neglected places, including her heart.

But she merely touched his arm playfully and said: “While that may be true…I would be lying if I said that I didn’t want you to kiss me.”

He looked down at her lips, so fiercely and tenderly that when he looked away after several heartbeats, she almost believed he had actually kissed her.

His fingers traced the edge of her collar, gently tugging at her cloak, and the pad of his finger caught the pendant from where it had lain against the floral muslin neckline of her dress, covering her heart like a promise.

“Your pendant is emblazoned with the letter ‘M,’ perhaps your name starts with the same letter? Or you’re wearing it for an old flame?”

“Can a lady not do both?”

He stared at her assessingly. “To be sure, but you could also be tricking me. And now I’m so intensely curious about this former flame. I must confess, I’m also rather…envious.”

He said the last word like he was casting a spell, and she felt like he already had, the moment she’d locked eyes with his dark ones.

“Make your guess, captain.”

“But there are no less than a hundred names that start with the letter M. You’d have to have chosen the one letter I could easily have gotten wrong.” He said with a provoking dimple.

She shrugged, “I did warn you. But I didn’t choose my name. My siblings and I are all alphabetical, starting with J.”

“Margaret,” he whispered.

Instantly, she let out a “Yes.”

At the same time, her maid called out: “Lady Moria, are you out here?”

She squinted and closed her eyes.

“Moria,” the man said her name against her lips like an incantation, like he conjured her up and brought her to life- or maybe, back to life?

“I’m Captain Devyn Winter. Now, go on before you’re missed.”

When the lady before him didn’t stir, didn’t move her lips farther away, his words were a tempestuous breath near her neck. “I wouldn’t dare leave without collecting my victory kiss.”

Moments later, Moria materialized from beneath the enveloping willow tree, her maid gasping from where she stood several paces away.

“My lady, you’re here. I was sent to fetch you for dinner, I was starting to worry.”

“I’m sorry, Ella.”

She wasn’t.

“It’s alright. I understand, my lady.”

“You…understand?”

“Sure. You were avoiding the others. Wanted a moment for yourself. Can’t say I blame ye, milady.” Ella gave her a conspiratorial smile.

“Ahh. Yes. You’ve found me out, Ella. Clever girl,” Lady Moria turned her full smile on Ella.

Ella stammered out: “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me, my lady.”

“Then I am in your debt,” Moria said, giving the other girl’s arm an affectionate squeeze.

Before making her way inside, Moria looked over her shoulder, to see the pirate captain now talking to a group of soldiers. He looked up as though her gaze had compelled him. It took all the steely resolve and composure she had left within her to go inside.

* * *

When Moria was small, her mother was the first to rise. Moria would climb into her mother’s bed, or find her in the sun room with a large shawl that she would drape around Moria and pull her close inside the covering. The two of them would watch as the sun rose over their Surrey estate.

“Isn’t it a gift? We take for granted that every day starts just as glorious as the last, some even more than the one before. All while most of us are still abed.”

And then she would kiss the top of Moria’s head.

Now, when the sun rose, Moria rose anyway, but closed the curtains on the sunrise. She didn’t need more reminders of all that she had lost.

But something about this particular morning seemed different.

After her meeting with the officer that had felt like something out of a folktale, this place seemed to have a charm all its own.

When she’d closed her eyes that night, all she’d pictured was the color green in a kaleidoscope of shades, enveloping and lush willow fronds cradling her like comforting arms.

Her eyes had opened at the sound of birds chirping outside on the balcony of her shared room with Olivia, lulled by whispers of a soft breeze. She felt she’d awoken in the garden of Eden.

She hadn’t. Just a humble coaching inn somewhere along the Great North Road.

Moria discreetly dressed and laced her boots, tying her blonde hair into a top knot and draping a woven shawl about her shoulders. Gingerly, she tiptoed down the stairs, careful to avoid the one stair at the bottom that had sounded like a startled goat the evening before.

She made her way out of doors to the picturesque little pond, the rising sun dappling her face akin to the feeling of a well brewed cup of tea that warmed a body from the inside out.

Through the fog, she found her way past a small kitchen garden, past the mews, to the willow tree.

She sat on a thick tree trunk close to the water for several moments in silence when she heard her name.

“Lady Moria,” said like a revelation, a benediction, a new discovery.

She looked at him from his feet upward. From gleaming Hessians, to breeches molded to muscled thighs, red coat that concealed shoulders surely Adonis himself would envy, hair pulled into a knot at the nape of his neck, eyes that pierced and blazed with fierce curiosity.

“You,” she breathed, turning toward him but not making to stand.

They were far enough removed from the inn that they couldn’t be overseen from a window, and it was early; but she lived in a den of spies.

She had years of practice that taught her to be ever vigilant.

Even yesterday, when she’d entered the inn, her childhood friend Fitz had noticed her dishevelment and rosy cheeks, though he hadn’t given her away.

The captain sat beside her. She fought a surge of prickling awareness as his knee touched hers. His long fingers rested on his knees; they were close enough that she could take his hand again, but no.

“You’re a rather shy creature, aren’t you?”

No one had ever accused Lady Moria Pembrooke of being shy.

“What makes you say that?” She studied the deep black pools of his eyes, wanting to see through him, to know what he saw when he looked through her.

“Both times I’ve met you, you have been in solitary repose.” He didn’t say it like it was a reproach, his voice held a teasing note.

She smiled down at her hands. “I’m not sure I’m ready to be what I’m supposed to be again.

A socialite. A rather reluctant, jaded one.

But I rather like this lake,” she fiddled with the petals of a wildflower in her hands in her lap, “Here, I feel like very little is expected of me, and silence is appreciated rather than sneered at. ‘Beautiful girls are supposed to smile and make lively yet proper conversation.’ Anyway, it must all sound very silly.” She shook her head.

He turned to her, the wind blew a strand of hair from her topknot across her face and he swept it behind her ear with startling tenderness.

“I don’t see anything silly about you. We all have people we are and people we are supposed to be; but I like this version of you, Lady Moria.

Don’t lose this one,” he gave her an encouraging smile that she pocketed the way the lake in front of her hoarded sunlight.

“Were that I had the freedom to stay and find out your many enchanting features,” he looked at her like he could perhaps puzzle them all out if he looked at her hard enough, “but I was preparing my horse, thinking of you, and then I saw you make your way here. I must depart with my company, but I wanted to say goodbye first.”

She waged battle with the fear and disappointment that rose to the surface at his words. He couldn’t leave now that she’d just found that such a man as this even existed, that such a man returned her interest and didn’t find her silly or frivolous, but enticing.

“When?”

“As soon as we break our fast.”

She nodded, pushing back the growing lump forming in the back of her throat. She would not reveal what a crushing disappointment such news was.

“May I write to you?”

She looked up at him in surprise. Not merely at his words, but at the unease in them.

“You want to write to me?”

He nodded emphatically. “If that isn’t too presumptuous.”

“You didn’t find it too presumptuous to say that you wanted to kiss me.”

He laughed a laugh that was so genuine, so warm, it stirred and heated icy, forgotten parts of her. It unlocked doors long sealed off and aired out abandoned, cobwebbed rooms of her heart.

“I don’t know why I ever thought you shy. I take it back. We’ll go with…refreshingly honest.”

“Do you have something to write with, and a piece of parchment?”

He dug inside of his coat and produced a small pencil and a pocket notebook.

He handed them both to her, and she wrote down her name and London address, then returned them to him.

His weathered fingers lingered over hers for several seemingly eternal moments before replacing the items where they had been moments before.

She told herself she wouldn’t, shouldn’t think about those hands, long and slender and capable; they were hands capable of ruin and destruction, but clearly capable of great tenderness as well.

The picture of them was etched behind her eyelids.

She’d forget her own name before she shook off the image of those finely inked hands brushing hers.

One inked with a horseshoe swept an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

She swallowed. “Where are you headed, captain?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say; but wherever I go, I fear you’ll follow me. In my thoughts, at least, my lady.”

She looked away and exhaled, trying to conceal her feelings. More than anything, she wanted-

“May I kiss you, my lady?”

Why did it feel as if he’d stolen her thoughts?

“If you don’t, we’ll both wish that you had.”

One hand lightly caressed his. He leaned in closer, pulling her close enough to hold her soft cheek, her jaw within the palm of one of his large hands.

His lips were so close, so indelibly close that the stubble coating his cheek collided with her own, she could claim his air for her own if she leaned just a little closer. But she didn’t.

He didn’t pull away as he said, “I’ll claim my kiss, when the time is right.

Until we meet again, my lady.” He took her hand in his, leaving behind a soft, gentle kiss as though he hadn’t been mere moments from taking possession of her mouth right there next to the lake.

And as they parted company, lingering glances exchanged like promises, she knew she’d see him again.