The Angel and the Aristocrat by Merry Farmer
Chapter 4
Lord Rothbury had the most fascinating eyes. They were as dark as the earth after a good, hard rain and just as stormy. Angeline had a hard time holding onto her thoughts as she chattered on about inconsequential things while they walked because of those eyes. They were so full of emotion, even though he still wasn’t smiling. Her mission to make the proud man smile was off to a terrible start. Here she was, talking about her father, instead of sharing stories of the silliness she and her friends had gotten up to in school, or telling tales of the things she’d seen at balls and other places Lord Rothbury would be familiar with. Five years of being away from society, and now she was completely out of practice at something as simple as talking to a gentleman.
But that was nothing compared to the way she overreacted when the butterfly landed on her cheek. She’d been startled was all, but for a moment, just a moment, she’d thought Lord Rothbury would smile at her giggling. That filled her with hope and made her feel as though she was just on the verge of victory when little Ewan dashed up from behind them and snatched Lord Rothbury’s handkerchief.
“Oh!” she gasped, both amused and exasperated by the adorable little thief. “Ewan! Come back here! That handkerchief belongs to Lord Rothbury.”
There was nothing for it but to pick up her skirts and chase after the boy, even though that meant leaving the path and plowing her way through the grass and uneven terrain of the meadow. Angeline didn’t mind at all, though. Her victory with Lord Rothbury had her full of energy and excitement. She would have run to the ends of the earth, knowing she’d almost made him smile. It had her wondering how she would feel once she finally did manage the impossible task.
“Ewan, slow down,” she shouted after the boy, giddy with happiness.
“Lady Angeline, you mustn’t—” Lord Rothbury called after her, but apparently, he didn’t know how to end his entreaty. “You’ll twist your ankle or rip your gown,” he called again.
He did have a point. The ground was decidedly bumpy under her feet, and the boots she’d donned that morning were more suited to walking on a sedate, even path than charging through a field. She was determined to return Lord Rothbury’s handkerchief to him, though, even if it meant fighting the grass and the slight wind that had picked up as the clouds darkened and rolled overhead. Still, she clapped a hand to her hat, fisted her skirts in one hand, and trudged on.
“Ewan, darling, please slow down,” she called, out of breath, as she reached the crest of the incline she’d just run up.
Ewan might have been young, but he was quicker than her and better suited for running through grass and wildflowers. He tore down the opposite side of the incline, heading for the line of other house party guests—which was now very much spread out along the path that skirted the river.
Lady Angeline stopped and pressed her free hand to her chest as she caught her breath. She spotted Lord Rothbury pushing toward her, even though the tall grass dragged at his trousers, but for the moment, she was more taken with the view from where she stood than anything else.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she gasped when Lord Rothbury finally came close, panting himself.
“It most certainly is,” he said, something warm and heavy in his voice.
Lady Angeline wasn’t certain what he was talking about, since he clearly hadn’t taken in the full sight of the landscape yet. “I mean the view,” she said. She marched back to him, grabbed his hand, and dragged him the rest of the way up to the crest of the small hill. “I know this isn’t exactly a mountain, but it’s like you can see the entire stretch of Yorkshire from here.”
She turned to face it, one hand still on her hat as the wind picked up and swirled around them. The scene was perfectly idyllic. The meadow stretched away in all directions, green dotted with purple and white and mauve wildflowers. The river seemed restless as it wove along the edge of the scene to one side. The trees on its banks waved their boughs in the wind, and the scent of impending rain filled the air. In the other direction, the Roman excavation was less beautiful, but still intriguing with all its disturbed earth and tiny outbuildings.
“It’s as though you can see all of time from this one spot,” she said, the excitement of it all racing through her.
“It’s captivating,” Lord Rothbury agreed, though when Angeline turned her head to look at him, he was staring at her and not the scenery.
“Have you had a chance to visit the excavation site yet, Lord Rothbury?” she asked—mostly because the sudden fluttery feeling inside her left her uncertain as to what she should be saying.
“Call me Rafe,” he blurted. A moment later, he blinked and shook his head slightly, then stuttered and said, “Er…that is…no, I have not. Not yet.”
Call me Rafe? Angeline’s breath caught in her throat. Calling a gentleman by his given name was an outrageous intimacy. It was something she never would have dared to do, not even with permission. But there was something about Lord Rothbury—Rafe—that begged for intimacy. It begged for affection and closeness, as if he’d never been given anything like it before.
“Are you—” She gulped, then started over. “Are you certain?”
“That I haven’t seen the ruins yet?” he asked, a hint of teasing in his eyes. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
“No, silly, I meant—”
Whatever she meant was irrelevant the moment she forgot about the wind and took her hand away from her head. The breeze was strong enough that it plucked her hat right off her head, hairpins and all, and sent it sailing across the meadow.
Angeline yelped, touching her hair. The style was hopelessly ruined, thanks to the force with which her hat had come off, but that was the least of her worries. With a laugh, she leapt after the hat, chasing it down the slope in the direction of the excavation.
Of course, there was a long distance between the crest of the slope and the excavation, and the wind was fierce enough to blow her hat out of her reach over and over. She slogged through the grass, leaping when she thought she might be able to reach it, then ended up laughing all over again when another gust carried it further away.
“I’ll get it,” Rafe called with manly gallantry, striding ahead of her through the grass and making a swipe for it just before another breeze picked up.
“Don’t worry about crushing the brim,” she called after him as he jogged through the wildflowers. His fine, masculine form was displayed well by a little running and reaching. At one point, he lifted his arms in such a way that the seat of his trousers was revealed. Angeline caught her breath at the firm shape of his bum, and her face went pink.
“Got it!” Rafe called at last, snatching her hat off of the grass where it’d finally landed.
Just as he turned toward her, the barest hints of a fledgling smile on his face at last, the skies opened up and rain began to pour down. That doused Rafe’s smile in an instant, along with everything else. Angeline laughed. They should have seen the rain moving in, since they were out in the open, but hat shenanigans had distracted them. Now, they were still out in the open with buckets of rain coming down.
“We must get to shelter immediately,” Rafe said in his serious voice of command, striding across the increasingly wet meadow toward her.
“Why?” Angeline asked with a teasing smile. “It’s just a bit of rain.”
“That’s it precisely,” Rafe said, reaching her and offering his arm. “It’s raining. We wouldn’t want you to get…wet.” The way his voice fumbled on the last word was both curious and alluring.
“I’m already very wet indeed, Rafe,” she said, sending him a cheeky look through her half-lowered lashes.
Rafe made a sound that Angeline found both intriguing and silly. They were both completely soaked in a matter of seconds, but something in the way Rafe looked reminded her more of fire than water.
“We should still take shelter,” he said, hurrying her through the field toward the excavation site.
“I think you’re right,” she sighed, walking as fast as she could, which became harder and harder as her skirts grew sodden.
She thought she must have looked like a sight. The lightweight fabric of her day gown clung to her more and more as they walked, giving away everything beneath it. She only hoped that Rafe wouldn’t hold it against her that her corset was as visible now as it would have been had she not been wearing a bodice at all, and that the tops of her breasts were visible along with it. Her skirt clung to her hips and legs as well, and by the time they reached one of the excavation’s out buildings—a simple shed in which shovels and a few lanterns were stored—she felt embarrassingly exposed.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she warned him with a sheepish look as she hugged herself against shivers—not all of which were because of the cold. “I must look exceedingly silly to you right now.”
“I can assure you, Lady Angeline, ‘silly’ is not the word I would use to describe you in your present condition,” he said, his voice deep and pleasantly growly.
“What word would you use?” she asked, glancing up at him in the close confines of the shed.
He took a very long time to answer. There wasn’t much light in the shed though two small windows in two opposing walls kept it from being completely dark, but there was enough for her to see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. She wanted to watch him swallow again. She could have studied the line of his neck all day, or his jaw, or the tight set of his lips. He had a lovely mouth, and she wasn’t so innocent or inexperienced that she didn’t want to kiss him. In fact, she was struck by the sudden interest in kissing him all over.
“Cold,” he said at last.
“I beg your pardon?” Angeline blinked herself out of the wild thoughts that were making her anything but cold.
“You look cold,” he said, then turned to the shelf at the back of the shed. “There are at least a dozen lanterns here. There must be matches to light them as well.”
Angeline steadied her breath and her racing heart as Rafe searched for matches, then lit one of the lanterns. It didn’t provide much warmth, but it did illuminate the shed. Illuminate it in such a way that made her wet and clingy gown all the more noticeable. Rafe glanced down at her, and his face pinched in such a way that hinted he was having second thoughts about the lantern.
“What were you and my brother talking about?” she asked, hoping it would distract him from their awkward situation and ease the pulsing tension between them. Although she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted it to be eased fully.
“Er…” he began, looking sheepish. Angeline decided she loved the way he hesitated, loved the slightly awkward hitch that tempered the power he radiated. She smiled, which seemed to affect him somehow. “I won’t be dishonest with you,” he said in a different tone of voice. “Your brother doesn’t want the two of us associating.”
Angeline blinked, flinching back. “Whyever not? Avery doesn’t even know you.”
“He has heard rumors about me,” Rafe confessed.
“Rumors?” Angeline’s gut twisted with anxiety. She hadn’t once thought to be afraid with Rafe by her side. Not through the entire ordeal that had landed them in the shed together. But now her heart trembled at the very idea of rumors.
Rafe let out a breath. “I was recently engaged, but that engagement is over,” he said, rushing into the last half of his sentence.
“Oh.” Angeline drew in a breath. That must have been why he was so sad. She was disappointed that his sadness was caused by another woman, though.
Until he said, “The lady in question decided she would rather marry her secret lover than me.”
“Oh?” Angeline said, far more sympathetically.
“But the story that has made the rounds in society paints me as a villain of the worst sort,” he finished.
“Those stories aren’t true, though,” she said, rather than asked. She didn’t see how anything other than the highest praise could be true where Rafe was concerned. In the last twenty-four hours that she’d known him, he had proven himself to be a gentleman and a champion. He didn’t feel like a blackguard either—which was a slightly flippant thing to say, but Angeline took great stock in the feelings that people gave her. She was convinced that Rafe was everything a gentleman should be.
And he’d been wronged.
“You poor thing,” she said with a sentimental sigh, daring to rest one hand on his chest.
He sucked in a breath as though her touch were fire. “I am not after your pity,” he snapped, then said, “I’m sorry, that didn’t come out the way I intended it to.”
“Not at all.” Angeline shrugged to show that she hadn’t taken the least bit of offense. “It sounds to me as though you’ve been through an upsetting time, so it is only natural that you have your defenses up. But I promise you, I don’t think any less of you for your unfortunate circumstances. And if the lady in question was in love with another man, then you’ve done both her and yourself a great service by setting both of you free.”
“There is the matter of the fact that I am being blamed for…for a great many things I didn’t do,” he said with a wince.
“I don’t believe it,” Angeline said. “I think you are a perfect gentleman, and you would never—”
Her words were cut off as he leaned into her, tilting her chin up with his free hand and closing his mouth over hers in a kiss. It was a perfect kiss—one that took her by surprise and drew the breath right out of her lungs. Rafe’s mouth was soft and warm on hers, but the insistence and need behind the way his lips melded to hers and his tongue stroked across the seam of her lips, begging her to let him in, was intoxicating. She opened to him at once, sighing with delight as his tongue invaded her.
As quickly as the kiss had begun, it ended when Rafe pulled back. His hand that still held the lantern aloft trembled slightly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was unforgivable for me to take such liberties, and—”
She didn’t want to hear the rest of his apology. Careful of his arm and the hand holding the lantern, she threw her arms around his shoulders, lifted up to her toes, and gave him back every bit of passion that he’d given to her with their first kiss. She’d never truly kissed a man before—not like that—but she considered herself a fast learner. She brushed her tongue against his lips, and when he parted them in a gasp of surprise, she mirrored his earlier gesture and slipped her tongue along his.
A sort of shudder passed through him, and he set the lantern down. Angeline wasn’t even certain where. All she knew was that his arms were around her a moment later, drawing her against his large, firm, warm body. Nothing had ever felt quite so wonderful in her life, and she sagged against him, surrendering herself fully. He slanted his mouth over hers again and again, kissing her jaw and the top of her neck as well.
“You’re beautiful, my angel,” he sighed, his every word as good as the touch of his lips. “I want you as I’ve never wanted anyone before.”
“Oh,” Angeline sighed. The sound was sensual and happy. She arched her neck to give him more space to kiss. She knew full well that she was being shameless and scandalous and wanton, but she didn’t care. Not one bit. She also knew full well that the thing pressing against her belly was him, but that only thrilled her instead of frightening her. Every single bit of information she and her friends had whispered and giggled about in their Twittingham Academy dormitory at night rushed back to her at once, sending her mind reeling.
And she understood. She understood completely how a woman could let herself be ruined. She understood how irresistible it was to feel this way with a man and how she would have happily done everything he wanted her to do, right then and there, if he’d only ask. It was powerful, frightening knowledge to possess—not just in her mind, but in her body. But through that fright was a solid trust in Rafe and everything he meant to her.
“I think they dashed in here,” someone’s muffled voice sounded from outside the shed.
It was just enough of a warning for Angeline to pull out of Rafe’s impassioned embrace and for Rafe to grab the lantern from the shelf where he’d set it. They were already wet and bedraggled, not to mention flushed from running, when the door to the shed flew open, so there was nothing at all to make Charity and Olive suspicious at the sight of them.
“There you are,” Charity said with a relieved laugh. “We saw the two of you run into the ruins, but we didn’t know which of the buildings you’d taken shelter in.”
The two women crowded into the tight space of the shed with them, shutting the door against the rain, which continued to pound.
“If it were me,” Olive said, “I would have chosen to shelter in the building where they have bits of pottery and artifacts from the dig instead of where they store the shovels.” She glanced around and sniffed.
“Lady Fangfoss ran back toward the house, saying she would send a small carriage around to collect her ‘guests in distress’, as she called it,” Charity laughed. “So all we need to do is wait.”
“And what were the two of you talking about?” Olive asked.
“Nothing,” Angeline answered breathlessly. “I was saying that I don’t mind the rain, because I’m Irish and we get quite a lot of it.” Her heart thundered furiously against her chest as she peeked up at Rafe.
“Er…have either of you ladies been to Ireland?” Rafe asked awkwardly.
“No, not yet,” Charity answered. “Though I would love to visit Lady Angeline at home someday.”
“And I would love to have you,” Angeline said, pretending nothing was out of the ordinary.
Though after what her friends had just interrupted, Angeline was beginning to wonder how long Ireland would be her home. She’d come to the house party to find a husband, after all, and, if she wasn’t mistaken, the Yorkshire skies had just opened up and handed her the perfect one.