Page 55

Chapter

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Travers!” Lady Frinton hammered on her bedchamber door while Lottie was trying to get ready for dinner. “A word in my room, if you please!”

As “a word” was usually code for chapter and verse as far as her employer was concerned, Lottie sighed at her half-done coiffure in the mirror as she accepted it was a lost cause. “I shall be right with you, my lady.”

In the absence of anything different to wear in her wardrobe than the three evening gowns she had packed and worn at least once each, she had been trying her best to do something wonderful with her hair that involved a curling iron.

The hope was that some fashionable ringlets would frame her face better than the few naturally wavy tendrils she usually left when she had to dress for a fancy dinner.

It was a vain and pathetic attempt to compete with all the other young ladies who all had expensive and fashionable gowns aplenty to do most of that work for them.

Not one of them had worn the same thing twice yet, not even Miss Yates, who was the only sensible one.

Lottie had never cared about such nonsense before, had always believed that she was confident enough in herself that she found all the hard graft that went into looking like “a woman,” like curling irons and rouge and tightly laced stays, a pointless waste of her time.

However, after this morning she wanted to be as attractive as she could be for him, just in case he was as keen as she was to finish their still unfinished business later.

She still couldn’t quite believe how brazenly she had propositioned him earlier.

It hadn’t been her intention at all during their ride to do so.

That had genuinely been more about rekindling their special friendship before she left.

A friendship that she had convinced herself she was content to leave with—until her body decided otherwise again.

However, as soon as his finger had touched her chin and then lingered, Lottie had realized that while she was determined to leave here as his friend, she was now seriously contemplating grabbing anything else that might be on offer while she was here.

And by anything else, after their kiss in the tack room, she suspected that she was prepared to offer him everything.

After all, if she would have given herself to him this morning—and she was in no doubt that she would have if they hadn’t been interrupted—it made no sense to do otherwise if opportunity knocked.

But was that wise when she was leaving?

If fate provided them with a chance to be alone, should she really throw all caution to the wind and give Guy her more than willing body on a platter for him to do what he pleased with?

She certainly had no doubt it would please her too. Her nipples instantly puckered at the thought of his hands on them and, over twelve hours after that sublimely passionate kiss, the sensitive bud of nerves between her legs was still absolutely distraught at being denied his touch.

And she had always subscribed to the old adage that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. She wouldn’t have kissed quite so many men if she hadn’t been hoping that she would be hit by the thunderbolt and then live happily ever after.

Her feelings for Guy hadn’t so much hit her like a thunderbolt—but they had snuck up on her quickly like fast-growing brambles and she was too entwined in them now to do anything about it.

The die was cast. Her heart had been stolen and that was that.

And while she would undoubtedly have to leave him, and then break all over again when she discovered that he had inevitably found some other lady of his class to spend his forever with, surely she would much rather live in the precious moments with him now than live with any regrets?

Even if it could go nowhere?

And wouldn’t it be better to have something more scandalous to contemplate on her deathbed than all the things she hadn’t done?

Life was for living, after all, and right in this moment, she was sorely tempted to live it to the fullest and to hell with the consequences.

Dive in headfirst and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow, exactly as she always did.

That philosophy hadn’t steered her wrong yet.

Unless she counted the two times galloping across Hyde Park that had caused her to be dismissed.

Or all the other thousand times when her recklessness had backfired, as all the bruises, tellings off, and mortifying recriminations she had accrued over the years were testament to.

Or how much she had hurt Guy by not telling him about the Surprise .

How could she not consider the consequences for once when the consequences for her heart were bound to be dire?

Unconsciously, she rubbed her chest. She had never experienced heartbreak before. At least not the sort that came from losing the prospective love of her life, and if she did dive all the way in with Guy, it might end up being too much to bear.

Was she prepared for that?

Could one ever be prepared for that?

Or was it inevitable anyway—seeing as her heart was already his?

What to do? What to do?

“Travers! What the blazes is keeping you now, gal?” As that shout made the wall between her room and Lady Frinton’s vibrate, Lottie would have to ponder the conundrum after she’d seen to her impatient employer’s latest whim.

With a last sigh at her lackluster unfinished coiffure, Lottie grabbed all the loose tendrils, pinned them to her bun, and took herself next door.

“Yes, my lady?”

“There is no easy way to say this, and nor do I suppose should there be, so I shall just say it straight out.” The older woman huffed. “Miss Maybury claims to have witnessed you having a tryst with my nephew this morning at the stables.”

Oh, good grief, what had she seen? The heated kiss? Guy’s hand on her breasts? Down the front of her breeches while she writhed against it? Hers brazenly exploring the length and girth of his impressive erection while her tongue was in his mouth?

Lady Frinton folded her arms. “I take it from your scarlet face and saucer-shaped eyes that her claim is true.”

Lottie scrabbled around for any excuse that would keep her in her job. “It was a moment of madness, my lady, and it will not happen again.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, gal! I couldn’t give a fig!

What two consenting adults do discreetly in their own free time is nobody’s business but theirs!

Life is too short not to grab the moments of madness, as you so aptly call them, by the horns.

So long as you are still running around at my beck and call when I expect you to, the pair of you can fornicate like rabbits for all I care. ”

“Then you are not going to dismiss me?”

“Of course not.” Lady Frinton waved that away.

“I merely wanted to warn you to be a bit more discreet, especially where the obnoxious Miss Maybury is concerned. She’s a sly one, that one, and I wouldn’t trust her as far as I can throw her.

Despite the half an hour of her detestable company that I had to endure this afternoon and my assurances that she shouldn’t read anything into two people running across a stable yard together as anything beyond them being in a hurry”—she paused to watch Lottie visibly relax at that clarification before she pointed a bony finger—“she is definitely on to the pair of you, and she is more than unhappy about it, so… be careful.”

Lottie didn’t know quite how to react or what to say to that, and fortunately she didn’t have to.

“Why the blazes are you still gawping at me, gal? Go do something with your hair. You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backward!”

No sooner had she stepped out of Lady Frinton’s door than she collided with Longbottom. “Seeing as it has been sitting on the hall table for two days, I thought I’d best hand deliver this to you.” He passed her a letter, looked her up and down. “Are you all right, Lottie?”

“Just a bit bemused, Longbottom.”

He assumed, because she had just left their employer’s bedchamber, that Lady Frinton was the cause. “I empathize. I feel like I’ve been permanently bemused for the last fifteen years. But ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do, eh?”

“Indeed.” Except she had no earthly idea what to do next—with either Guy or Miss Maybury.

Her head spinning, Lottie took her letter into her room and stared at her youngest brother’s scruffy handwriting on the front before she put it on her nightstand to read later when the spinning stopped.

Then, overwhelmed with considering all the potential consequences of her increasingly complex situation, she picked it up and cracked the seal.

Dear Lottie,

I have no idea how you did it, Beanstalk, but sending Lord Wennington to the farm was a stroke of genius.

Thanks to you, our father has a spring in his step, the cows are saved, Stephen’s read every book on legumes that he can find and now considers himself the world’s foremost expert on the subject, and we’re all preparing the Field of Doom, ready to plant it in the spring.

I know Papa has already written to him to thank him, but can you thank Lord Wennington personally for me for the two cartloads of pea seeds that arrived so promptly the day after his visit?

It was obvious to me that they were brand-new despite all his claims that they were left overs moldering away in his barn, it was obvious to the rest of the boys too, but we roughed up all the sacks before our father saw them and he is, thankfully, none the wiser.

You know how proud and stubborn he gets at any whiff of charity!

I dread to think how much Lord Wennington paid for all those seeds though at such short notice, but let him know from me that once they grow, we’ll repay him properly for his generosity.

Dan