Miss Determined, page 15
“Empty houses have a different kind of quiet,” Trevor said, “as if they wait rather than slumber. I toured many empty homes in France, some of them pathetically grand. They’d survived the famines, the Revolution, the Terror, and the wars, but their occupants had not been so lucky.”
“Were you tempted to buy any of them?”
The clock on the mantel had stopped at noon or midnight. The sunshine coming through the windows was bright, but the Holland covers gave the parlor a sad air.
“I bought one of the most modest properties,” Trevor said, “not for the house. I have land in France, and the dwelling came with the acres. A friend manages it for me. We grow claret grapes, mostly.” Fournier was a friend, for all he was also a business partner.
Trevor saw the question his disclosure raised: He could afford land in France. He had toured pathetically grand homes with a view toward buying them. He had means, so why not…?
“Is there somebody else, Trevor?” Amaryllis asked, leading the way up the steps. “Somebody to whom you are obligated?”
He was obligated to the Marquess of Tavistock and to a thousand other somebodies—tenants, factors, staff, cousins, pensioners, Parliament—though nobody save Jeanette would miss him if he resumed traveling for another five years.
“I am free of romantic entanglements—of other romantic entanglements.” He followed Amaryllis up the narrow steps and emerged onto a landing that boasted a window seat. The horses cropped grass below, and the roofline of Twidboro Hall was barely visible through the luminous green of the emerging canopy.
Two doors opened off the landing, the bedrooms presumably, and a visual metaphor for choices Trevor faced.
“Might we sit for a moment, Amaryllis?”
“You are the only person to call me that, other than Mama when she’s vexed with me.” She settled on the window seat and studied the dusty toes of her riding boots.
“Your name is lovely, and you are lovely, but you are too reserved to ask me what my intentions are. Had you a father or brother on hand, they would sort me out, but since no such worthy is available, you must sort me out yourself.”
She patted the place beside her. “Are you in a muddle?”
“I am. You?”
“I know very clearly who and what I want, Trevor.”
A secluded gatehouse was a fine place to have a difficult discussion, though it struck Trevor belatedly that it was also a fine place to… effect a mutual seduction.
“You don’t know the whole of the who,” he said, taking her hand. “You know me as Trevor Dorning, and Trevor is my forename.”
“Which you gave me leave to use, of all the shocking familiarities.” She sounded pleased.
Trevor took courage from that. “We’re in Crosspatch, where friendliness comes as no shock to anybody, but, Amaryllis, you should know that my father was the late Marquess of Tavistock.”
The fellow everybody, including Trevor, had disliked. If Trevor’s lineage cost him Amaryllis’s affection, he might graduate to hating the old shade.
“Lord Tavistock was your father?”
“And I hold him in as low esteem as the rest of the village does, but I cannot deny my patrimony.”
Trevor expected Amaryllis to leap off the window seat, or at least rise, make a brisk remark about the time, and state a pressing need to rehearse some duet or other with Caroline.
Amaryllis put her head on his shoulder. “You cannot help who your father was any more than I can help that mine was the son of a prosperous shop owner, not that I’d want to change that. We are not our parents, Trevor.” She took a firmer hold of his hand, and Trevor wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“He was awful to my mother, awful to women generally, but not much better to any man who didn’t outrank him. He demanded toadying, then insulted those who toadied because they lacked a spine. He excelled at giving other people nothing but bad choices.”
“Like denying my father ownership of Twidboro. Papa could continue on as a tenant subject to his lordship’s whims when it came to maintaining the property, or Papa could uproot us and admit that Tavistock had rejected a shopkeeper’s coin.”
An extraordinary thought emerged from the relief coursing through Trevor: Amaryllis not only took no issue with Trevor’s station, she sympathized with him.
“I was to be an obedient son, but if I was too obedient, then I was, in his lordship’s words, a disgraceful invertebrate,” Trevor said. “I was to be smart, but if I was too smart, then I was an arrogant little bookworm. I was to be polite, but if I was too polite, then I was a disgusting little prig. I was never what he wanted me to be, but then, he was never what I wanted him to be either.”
“He’s dead,” Amaryllis said in the same tones she might have noted that the pansies beneath the market cross were wilted. “You are quite alive and apparently thriving. I do not hold your patrimony against you, Trevor, and nobody else in Crosspatch will either. The old marquess was a blight upon society and apparently a blight upon your life as well.”
The situation wasn’t as simple as that. Papa had also been conscientious about managing his marquessate. He’d had cronies, if not friends. He’d been denied the nursery full of sons he’d longed for, and he’d seen his legitimate heir well educated and more than adequately fed, clothed, and housed.
He’d done his duty, however begrudgingly.
Amaryllis kissed Trevor’s cheek. “This has been weighing on your mind, hasn’t it?”
“Terribly. Would you want to claim a connection to a man who’s universally reviled in the village?”
“No, but neither would I dignify that connection with subterfuges meant to hide it. I have not been riding out with the late marquess. I haven’t been turning my family loose on him to test his manners and patience. I certainly haven’t been kissing him, and it’s not the late marquess I’m dreaming of.”
Trevor’s dread of this conversation was replaced by a sense of lightness and joy, and—it took his mind some groping about to find the word—hope.
Amaryllis’s great good sense, her pragmatism and inherent kindness, were seeing him through. “You dream of me?”
She nuzzled his shoulder. “I ought to know better, but there you have it. When I should be stitching a new pair of gloves to match my retrimmed bonnets, I’m instead wondering, ‘What does Trevor look like with his shirt off? Does he have a favorite poem? Where did he learn to ride so well?’”
“My riding skills were honed on every back road and farm lane in France, for the most part. Do you truly dream of me?” He dreamed of her, though he knew the lanes and paths where she’d learned her riding skills, and he’d already memorized her favorite Shakespearean sonnet.
Not the romantic flights of Sonnet 18 or the pretty comparisons of Sonnet 116, though Amaryllis granted them honorable mention. Her favorite was the sober and reflective Sonnet 29.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state… Haply I think on thee… For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
“I think of you,” Amaryllis said. “I think of matters a young lady doesn’t admit to dwelling on.”
He hugged her. “How you flatter me.”
She drew back and regarded him with a focus that tossed Shakespeare’s pretty rhymes right out the window.
“I am not asking for a commitment, Trevor, but I am asking for a memory. We have time, we have privacy, we have—”
He silenced her with a swift buss to the cheek. “When it comes to the commitment, I do the asking. I put my entire future and my heart into your hands. Then you decide whether to accept or reject my proposal. If you want the bended-knee bit, I’m happy to oblige, but your mother, grandmother, and sisters would probably like to eavesdrop on that exchange.”
Amaryllis leaned against him and was silent for a fraught moment. “They would, but I’m not sure I can allow that. Some conversations should be private. Before we get to the pretty speeches, Trevor, I’d like to…”
He felt the heat of her blush because they sat cheek to cheek in the window seat.
“You want to try my paces?” he suggested.
“You aren’t a horse.”
“I am a prospective husband.” He’d never thought to say those words so joyfully. “You have been disappointed by others, and you are entitled to sample my wares if you please to before we get to the pretty speeches, though I warn you, Amaryllis, they will be short speeches, however heartfelt.”
“Do you suggest I might have to yield my crown as the most plainspoken member of the family?”
Family—he was to be a member of her family, as she was to become nearly the sum total of his.
“I’ll have a tiara made for you instead of a crown,” he said, though the Tavistock jewels included at least four tiaras. “Shall we make love, Amaryllis?” He could pose the question without any agenda other than acceding to her wishes. They’d all but agreed to be married, she knew who she’d be marrying, and all was right with Trevor’s world.
She stood and held out her hand. “I’ve kept the second bedroom dusted. The balcony has a nice view of the Twid, and I like to read and nap here when the weather is fine.”
Trevor took her hand, kissed her knuckles, and rejoiced to recall the day he’d decided to see Crosspatch Corners for himself.
“Before we yield to passion—because I will yield, Amaryllis, and will do my utmost to see that you do as well—I have one very short speech to make.”
Her expression said his speech had best be the shortest in the history of speeches.
“I love you,” he said, though he wanted to throw open the window and shout the words to the world. “I love you and—”
She bundled him into a ferocious hug. “I heard you the first time. Thank you for the words, now show me that you mean them.”
She was shy, bless her. Trevor felt shy, too, also pleased, proud, and determined to prove that Amaryllis would never, ever regret her choice.
“Let the wild yielding to passion begin,” he said, opening the bedroom door and bowing her through, “and may it never, ever end.”
Amaryllis sailed into the bedroom on wings of rejoicing.
Trevor’s illegitimacy explained so much. A peer’s by-blow had a foot in the fashionable world and a foot in the common man’s realities. He’d be a canny fellow accustomed to keeping his own counsel. He would be well educated, well dressed, and well mannered, but also cautious, never presuming he’s welcome and always aware of the appearances. Fashionable Society would receive him, though an invitation to show his face at Court would have been unusual.
She could well understand why he’d enjoy Continental society, which operated with fewer strictures and conventions. His titled half-brother apparently did too.
Trevor’s enviable self-possession had clearly been learned early and well, in a world that had frequently judged him for matters beyond his control.
Amaryllis knew how it felt to be held accountable for the previous generation’s choices. Her grandfather had been a shopkeeper—a shopkeeper!—and her father was still regarded as little better. How much more complicated if her father had been a titled, philandering martinet disregarding his marriage vows?
“I want to hurry,” she said. “To tear your clothes off before you succumb to a sudden attack of propriety.”
“If you succumb to such an attack, Amaryllis, or to an understandable bout of cold feet, I will respect your decision.”
Because he respected her. That was what made Trevor different. Other men had found Amaryllis attractive. Other men had been taken with her settlements, or her figure, or her agreeable conversation.
Trevor relished their disagreements and even incited the occasional argument out of sheer deviltry.
He closed and locked the bedroom door—a nice bit of gallantry, though nobody would intrude here—and gestured to the vanity stool.
“My lady’s boots should be removed.”
Trevor meant for them to undress. That realization dashed a bit of cold water on Amaryllis’s fog of delight.
“I’ve done this with my boots on, you know.”
“As have I,” Trevor replied, “but those were passing moments, while what we undertake now matters, Amaryllis. If we are to be intimate, I’d like for our first time to be more than a quick interlude against a sturdy wall.” He studied the room, a particular gleam coming into his eyes. “Unless you’d prefer a sturdy wall?”
Gracious. “The bed will do.”
He patted the back of the vanity stool, and Amaryllis’s heart gave an odd leap. She’d dreamed about him, speculated, wondered, and hoped, and he was right—this mattered. She settled on the vanity stool and held out her right boot.
Trevor made quick work of her footwear and remained on his knees before her. “You’re sure, Amaryllis?”
“Are you?”
“Never more certain in my life. Let’s get you out of that riding habit, shall we?”
Part of Amaryllis was happy to follow Trevor’s lead, to let him be the one thinking logically and managing the practicalities, but she’d been entirely passive in her previous encounters, and Trevor merited more from her than mere acquiescence.
“What of your boots?” she asked, rising. “What of this cravat? I’d hate for it to get torn in a moment of enthusiasm.”
“Then you best remove it from my person, hadn’t you?”
She took her time, and not because her hands shook ever so slightly. With Charles, she’d watched the cobwebs wafting about in the corners of the Breadalbane library’s coffered ceiling. Somebody had neglected the dusting sorely.
She could hardly recall the details of her encounter with Titus Merriman. A conservatory rendered aromatic by virtue of a barrow of horse manure awaiting use in the rose garden. Damp air and a cramp in her right thigh while Titus… jiggled away.
Trevor would brook no inspection of the ceiling, though Lissa very much wanted to inspect him. She slid the cravat from his neck and draped it neatly on the vanity. Next, she undid the buttons of his waistcoat and shirt, then relieved him of his jacket and slipped his sleeve buttons free.
“Enough for now,” Trevor said, sitting on the bed and pulling off his right boot then his left. “My turn.”
He unbuttoned the jacket of Lissa’s riding habit, and though she had on several other layers—shirt, chemise, jumps—she felt every brush of his fingers, every undone hook. As he eased her clothing off, he indulged in small caresses—a hand brushed over her hip, a finger drawn along her shoulder, a kiss to her nape.
All lovely, and yet, disconcerting. “You are taller when we take our boots off.” Inane observation.
He leaned close. “I am dying to learn how our heights match in bed, Amaryllis.” He kissed her lips, and that became a whole bouquet of kisses.
Lissa wrapped her arms around him, the better to kiss him back. She’d known he was solid muscle, but to have only a thin lawn shirt between her fingers and his naked flesh…
“Shirt off, please.”
“How polite you are.” He stepped back and pulled his shirt over his head. “Skirt off, please.”
Lissa managed the hooks and tape and stepped free. With a traditional sidesaddle habit, she would have worn breeches beneath the skirt. With the divided skirt, she wore only plain stockings gartered above the knee and a summer-length chemise.
The stockings were darned, the chemise worn, and yet, the way Trevor regarded her made her feel lovely. His gaze held longing and desire, but also tenderness, reverence even.
“I am,” he said, “the most fortunate of fellows. I am anointed by fate to endure more wonder and delight than a mortal man can describe.”
Rather than withstand that gaze, Lissa turned back the bedcovers. Thanks to her bickering sisters, she’d kept this room as a sort of retreat, and thus the bed was made, the windows clean, the linen lightly scented with lavender.
“You are loquacious,” Lissa said. “Will you murmur sweet nothings to me the whole time we’re frolicking?”
“I will murmur whatever your please, Amaryllis, or maintain a rapt silence, the better to savor a sensory feast. I am yours to command.”
She sat on the bed and undid her garters. What commands did one give? Tallyho? View halloo? She was abruptly feeling in over her head and at risk for bungling.
Bravado would not serve, and retreat would not do at all. That left… Lissa cast around for strategies. Changing the subject, trying for a jest, small talk… Nothing in her social arsenal would get her past the growing puddle of self-consciousness occupying the place where her enthusiasm had so recently been.
That left… honesty?
Well, yes. With Trevor, she could be honest. “You find me at something of a loss. I know how to organize the sack races at the village fete, but this… I am at sea, Trevor. I have no desire to row in to shore, but I haven’t… That is, I’m not as experienced as you might…” She gathered her courage and leaped. “I don’t know what to do.”
The words cost her. If he laughed, if he gave orders, if he lost interest because of her ineptitude…
He sat beside her, tucked an arm around her, and spoke near her ear. “We do as we please, my love. We come together in a rapture of shared, private indulgence, but, Amaryllis?”
“Trevor?” How she loved the feel of him, warm and naked and close.
“Please be patient with me. I am unsure of myself in this new venture, and I need time to find my way.”
Of all the words he could have murmured in her ear, those were unaccountably dear. “You aren’t in the least unsure of yourself.”
“Oh, but I am. I have frolicked, as you put it, but this will be lovemaking, and I am determined to exceed your expectations, though I am as new to the venture as you are.”
The knot of self-doubt Amaryllis had been worrying eased. Trevor would not lie to her, not about this. He was telling her she was different and that he was at sea with her too—in the same boat.
“I like the cuddling part,” she said, yet another inanity, “and you are a good kisser.” Also a dear, desirable, breathtakingly brave man who’d said he loved her and apparently meant it.
