Page 93 of The Ladies Least Likely

“She does know that Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, including Tavistock Abbey?” Mal whispered in Amaranthe’s ear. Her hair, coming loose from its twist, tickled his cheek. “I thought much of the green stone used around the town came from villagers dismantling the abbey after it closed.”

“I lied to that man,” Amaranthe said, looking stricken, and holding her valise as if she had the leash of a recalcitrant pet. “But she was about to claim our room, and I’m too weary to continue on today. I want a wash and a cream tea.”

“Whatever my lady desires,” Mal promised, taking the key with a small bow.

If she detested lies, then she couldn’t be a liar, could she? Mal felt considerably lighter in the chest area as they took turns freshening up.

After his own wash and donning a fresh cravat, Mal looked for Amaranthe in one of the small private parlors on the first floor. Their window looked out on the spired tower of St. Eustachius church and, beyond, the green bogs and stony tors of Dartmoor.

Mal paused to appreciate the view. He had grown up around dramatic scenery, climbing the Avon Gorge with friends and hunting for bilberries in Leigh Woods.

But there was something lonely and haunted about the bare, wild moors dotted with the occasional longhouse and standing stones.

It was a pocket of ancient myth lying, mouth open, beside the modern world, and he relished it.

He savored also the sight of Amaranthe presiding over tea, pouring him a dish and adding the one lump of sugar she knew he liked.

He had seen her habit hanging in the room, neatly brushed, when it was his turn to change and freshen.

She wore a simple open robe of blue silk with a saffron stomacher, a gown of Sybil’s that he had seen her wear for dinner at home, and though her hair was unpowdered and arranged quite simply, her quiet loveliness and the intimate domestic arrangement drew a thread around his heart and pulled it tight.

He’d not been mistaken to choose her. It had been the single truest and most accurate instinct of his unlucky life.

“Feeling better?” she asked as he seated himself. She cut open a scone and passed it to him.

“Much. I like our room. I’m very glad you didn’t let Lady Abbey take it. I’m sure she’ll be much more comfortable with the accommodations at the Bedford Inn.”

“Emmet!” she exclaimed, watching him, and he paused with a spoon in the air.

“What did you call me?”

“Foreigner. You put your cream on your scone first,” she scolded.

“I thought that’s how it’s done.”

“Upcountry.” She shook her head. “We Cornish put the jam on first, see? It’s a dead giveaway where he’s from, how a man takes his cream tea.” She showed him her own scone, solidly heaped with jam beneath a generous dollop of cream. “The cream, at least, is clotted, not whipped.”

“Have mercy,” Mal said, and commenced dressing his scone exactly as he wished. “I imagine I’ll be putting a foot wrong everywhere at Penwellen. I hear your accent strengthening the closer you get to the Tamar River.”

“They say the devil daren’t set foot in Cornwall,” she answered, her eyes sparkling with humor.

“King Arthur was born in Cornwall, don’t you remember?

The stones of the old giants are scattered all over, and you’ve to watch for mermaids and selkies on the shore.

If you find the selkie’s seal skin you can keep her with you in her human form, but a mermaid will lure you to the depths of the sea and drown you. ”

“Or take me to lost land of Lyonesse,” he said, entering into her playful spirit. “Lying beneath the sea between Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly. Home of the hero Tristan, of Tristan and Isolde fame.”

“We call it Lethowsow ,” she said solemnly. “A mighty kingdom, prosperous and peaceful, with hundreds of churches and great forests. Sunk beneath the sea in one night of terrible storms. On a calm day you can see the spires of the churches beneath the water and hear the ringing of their bells.”

He adored her like this. “I had not taken you for such a fanciful creature, Mrs. Delaval,” Mal teased. “You seemed so proper and serious when I came upon you in your home. Hard at work on your medieval manuscripts, preserving centuries-old knowledge.”

Her eyes fell and her manner changed, the gleam of mischief fading. He immediately wanted it back. “Tell me how you became so preoccupied with old books and lost languages,” he said.

“My father, mostly.” She stirred milk into her tea and sniffed it.

Her fleeting expression of pleasure tugged at him.

“He was fond of classical antiquity, as I mentioned, but he was also a linguist of sorts. He made a study of the Cornish language and was compiling a manuscript of old Cornish myths and legends. One of his colleagues laid claim to it when he died, but I’ve always thought about finding and finishing it.

” She sipped her tea and lifted her eyes to his.

“Tell me how you became interested in the law.”

“Because I haven’t the temperament to take orders in the military, and I haven’t the proper meekness to be a priest. As a bastard I cannot inherit so must make my own way, and I haven’t any skills for a trade.

” He shrugged. “But I can read, and I can argue for as long as necessary, so the law seemed appropriate, and my father paid my fees.”

“Were you close with him?”

“Not in the least. Once a quarter he hauled me into his study to give me a full accounting of my errors and flaws, then handed over the allowance by which I was supposed to amend my ways.” Mal shook his head at the memories.

“I might have been better off if he’d left me to run a coaching inn in Bristol. ”

“You seem suited for the law,” she said softly. “I think you’ll be able to accomplish great things, once you’re called.”

“Once I am married and therefore called.” He met her eyes, and again her gaze fell. Her constant retreat was wearing on him. What was wrong with him that she would not accept him? That she could enjoy his company, even desire him—for he was sure he read her gaze correctly—but refused to act?

“Is it difficult, being illegitimate?”

“Yes,” he said harshly. “So many people judge me on that alone. I know it weighs on how people regard me, even when they claim it doesn’t.”

She stared at him, her eyes dark but steady. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

“You say that.” The words tumbled from him against his better judgment. “Yet I notice you cannot bear my touch.”

She sprang from her seat as if a fire had begun there. “That’s not true.”

“It isn’t?” Ever the gentleman, he stood as well. “You draw back whenever I am near you.”

“That is not because of you.”

“Indeed?” He hated the bark of laughter that followed. He heard the hurt in it, too many long years of being teased, rejected, and passed over. Mal o’ Misfortune. The bastard of a duke. The orphan of a lightskirt and a rogue. “Who else would it be concerning, then?”

All his life when he saw others with advantages and pleasures he’d never have, he told himself he didn’t care, that he’d never wanted anything that had been denied him because of his birth. But she denied him, and he regretted that bitterly.

She paced around the small room, twisting her hands together. She must be truly overset to leave her tea growing cold. She paused before him, and her scent filled his nose. Damn her for affecting him the way she did.

“I should have known,” she said in a halting fashion. “I should have seen that—” She shook herself and breathed deeply. “I owe you an explanation.”

“You owe me nothing,” he said woodenly.

“I want you to know.” She dragged her gaze up to meet his, and he felt lost at the look of hopeless longing in her eyes. “I haven’t…allowed myself to be—close to anyone. Because of Reuben,” she said.

“I see.” He steeled himself against the blow of this knowledge. “You have a tendre for your cousin. Carrying a torch for him, I take it?”

“No!” The word burst from her. He felt the small rush of air between them. “Good heavens, no.” She took his hand, and he reeled at the warmth and desire that shot through him at her touch. “Not that. Quite the opposite.”

He struggled to understand, and horror twined with suspicion. “He?—?”

“Not me. He forced himself on Eyde and then turned her out of his house when she fell pregnant. When I found out?—”

She clutched his hand with both of hers, and as much as he wanted to draw her close, instinct warned him to make no move. To let her be in control of how their bodies touched.

She swallowed. “When I found out, he demanded to have his way with me. Eyde and I left that day. I couldn’t stay in the house, and she had nowhere to go. Derwa is my cousin’s illegitimate daughter,” she said softly.

This was news; he’d assumed Derwa was Davey’s child. Mal curled his fingers gently around her palm, still holding his. “You escaped to Oxford then,” he said.

“We went to Bath first, to my old schoolmistress, who gave us shelter for a time. She had connections in Oxford who could give me work, since Joseph had no means to support us. I was certain that if I were with Joseph, Reuben could not force me back into his home. He never tried, and we moved to London and were quite happily free of him, until Favella wrote. But every time?—”

She halted, then straightened her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Each time you came close to me, I feared I would feel not you, but Reuben’s slime.”

“I see,” he said again, trying desperately to shut off the surge of despair. She would have nothing to do with him because of what her cousin had done. He cursed the man silently with the vilest curses he could conjure. “I understand you would want no one to touch you.”

“That’s not true. I want you to touch me.” She gulped, and he watched the delicate movement of her throat, of her lips as they opened to speak again, her voice low and throaty. “I want to touch you. But I’m afraid of what I might feel .”