It was one of the worst nights that Lucia could ever recall. Guilt could do that, and as she’d raced down the hall from Rivers’s rooms to her own, she’d never felt more guilty, or more confused, in her life. Her heart racing, she’d locked her bedchamber door in case he tried to follow her, and then a quarter hour later, she’d unlocked it again for the same reason. She didn’t know what she wanted or what she expected, beyond that kissing Lord Rivers Fitzroy had been at once glorious, and thoroughly, hopelessly disastrous.
In one impulsive, foolish moment, she could have ruined everything. She should never have gone to his rooms in her nightclothes in the first place. What was he to think? What more obvious invitation could there be than that? Surely he must judge her to be exactly like her cousin Magdalena, available to any wealthy man who could purchase her fancy.
But she wasn’t, not at all. He’d likely never believe it, but that kiss had been her first. She was twenty-three years old, old enough to qualify as a spinster, and she’d never had a sweetheart, let alone a noble lover. She remained a virgin not so much by choice, but because she’d never known a man worthy of her surrender. Surrounded by the more brilliant beauties at the playhouse, she’d always gone unnoticed, an undistinguished and lowly weed among so many exotic blossoms.
But here in the country, Rivers (for in her head she’d abandoned his title) hadn’t overlooked her. Although the wager had brought them together into a kind of partnership, she hadn’t expected the intimacy that would come with it. He did believe in her, in her talent and her ambition, but there was more to it than that.
When she was with him, she felt a kind of spark, an energy she couldn’t find words to explain. It wasn’t just that he was clever, and charming, and as handsome as sin itself. He made her feel as if her life were richer, more vibrant, more filled with possibilities. He made her feel more alive, if such a thing were possible, as if the rest of her life had been spent in a dreary, gloomy sleep, and he alone had the power to wake her. No one else could do that, and knowing she’d little more than a month with him had only served to make the time in his company more precious.
All of which was why she’d run to join him last night as soon as she’d heard him return home. All she’d wanted was the pleasure, the excitement, of sharing her understanding of the play with him, and instead she’d unwittingly destroyed what they had together.
One kiss, and they’d ceased being simply partners in the wager. Two kisses, and they’d become something else entirely: a wealthy lord and a common little girl from the playhouse, a passing amusement for his entertainment and nothing more.
No wonder she’d spent the night tossing and turning and burying her face in the pillows in despair. She would try to explain to him that what mattered most to her was her chance to act, but the damage was done. She might not be experienced with men herself, but she’d seen enough at the playhouse to know that once men were granted a favor by a woman, they’d expect it again, and more besides.
That, really, was her choice after last night. For the sake of becoming the actress he’d promised, she could let him continue what last night had begun, and be his mistress until he tired of her. There’d be no shame in it for her. In the eyes of the public, such an alliance with a high-placed nobleman was to be expected, even envied, and would likely be advantageous in creating her allure as a popular actress. Even bearing his illegitimate child could bring certain advantages, and no stigma in the theatrical world. She was sure Rivers was the kind of honorable gentleman who would acknowledge and support a bastard child, which would in turn bind him closer long after his love for her was spent.
But she knew herself well enough, and she knew the personal consequences of such a path. A mistress would never be the same as a wife. When she left here, she’d have the training and chance to succeed on the stage that he’d promised, but she’d also have a broken heart.
Now she sat alone in the back parlor where Rivers took breakfast and waited for him to come downstairs. On the cloth beside her teacup was the copy of Hamlet that he’d given her, with the ribbon marking the passage she’d already learned. She’d been sitting here nearly an hour, not wanting to miss him. Over and over, she’d rehearsed what she’d say, a carefully chosen speech that had nothing to do with Ophelia. All she could do while she waited was sip at her tea, and pray he’d listen, and understand.
She started when at last the parlor door opened and he joined her. She slipped from her chair and curtseyed silently, waiting for him to speak first. He was dressed for morning in the country—a red waistcoat, fawn-colored buckskin breeches, and a blue frock coat—and not for riding, so at least he’d no intention of escaping from her on horseback. But he looked every bit as uneasy as she did herself as he motioned for her to return to her chair.
“Good day, Mrs. Willow,” he said, using the false name he’d concocted for her. “I’ve told you before that you needn’t curtsey to me whilst we’re here. The Lodge is not so formal a house as that.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she murmured as she perched on the edge of her chair, her hands folded in her lap. Her rehearsed little speech hung awkwardly unspoken as she waited for the proper opportunity to begin.
He poured his own tea—another example of the Lodge’s informality—dumped two spoonfuls of sugar into the cup as well, and stirred it with a clatter of silver against porcelain.
“I trust you slept well,” he said, concentrating on the steaming tea to avoid meeting her eye. “No, you needn’t answer that. If you slept even half as badly as I, then you passed a most miserable night.”
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “That is, I likewise passed a most miserable, horrible night.”
He sighed and sipped at his tea, grimacing from its heat.
“Then that makes two of us,” he said. “We both know the reason why, too, so I suppose there’s no use in ignoring it any further.”
“No, my lord,” she said faintly. Now would be the time to begin her speech, now, now, yet her usual gift for memorization had fled.
“No.” He cleared his throat. “Given your, ah, unusual upbringing in the theatrical world, I suspect you do not have the usual, ah, delicacy regarding men and women, and what occurred last night between us.”
“I’m not like Magdalena,” she blurted out, and flushed. “That is, I’m not as…as…”
“As much a mercenary?” he suggested, and smiled wryly. “I don’t believe any other woman could rival your cousin in that arena. But while they say that blood binds kin together, I’ve never once thought of you and Magdalena in the same light.”
She nodded cautiously, but said nothing more. That remark could cut two ways. Her heart was racing with uncertainty, and for another precious moment she wanted to cling to the hope that he’d meant to flatter her, not Magdalena.
“Indeed, indeed,” he said, the kind of empty, meaningless word that gentlemen said when they were at a loss for something of more substance. Could his thoughts be as unsettled as her own?
“Yes, my lord,” she said softly. “Indeed it is a tangle.”
He let out his breath with relief. “A tangle, yes. I know you’ve forbidden me any further apologies, which is a complication. But when I say that you differ from Magdalena, I mean to say that you are a better, more honorable woman than she will ever be. What happened between us last night—”
“It should never have happened, my lord, not at all,” she said as firmly as she could, even as her heart fluttered with the great compliment that he had just paid her. “The hour was late, and at that hour things will happen that will be regretted by day.”
He placed his teacup deliberately on its saucer, tapping the rim lightly with his finger. “I don’t regret kissing you, Lucia. Not one bit.”
Sharply she drew in her breath, taken aback. “You don’t, my lord?”
“I don’t,” he said evenly, looking up at her. “What I do regret, however, are the circumstances that make it both unwise and unacceptable for me to kiss you again, as I would like.”
This was very nearly what she’d planned to say herself. Relief swept over her, but mixed with her own regret, too.
“That is very true, my lord.” She was glad he sat on the other side of the table, where he couldn’t see how her hands were twisting together in her lap. “If I am to become the actress I wish to be, I must make certain—certain sacrifices. I don’t want things to be the way you said, unwise and unacceptable.”
“Indeed,” he said solemnly, that empty, hollow word again. “Then we are agreed, yes?”
“Another agreement,” she said wistfully. “We’re good at that, aren’t we?”
“It’s for the best,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure it was. “We shall proceed this morning as if last night had not happened.”
“Because it didn’t, my lord,” she said, though she could not quite keep the sadness from her voice. “Leastways, not that I recall.”
“Nor I,” he said, a shade too heartily. “Which is just as well, considering how much work we have before us. What you did with the passage last night was first-rate, but there’s an entire play for you to learn, and we’ve less than six weeks in which to do it.”
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “I am ready to begin whenever you please.”
He didn’t answer, his blue eyes studying her so intently that she felt her cheeks grow warm. He’d looked at her like this last night as well, when she’d told him he was the only one who believed in her, and just before he’d kissed her.
“It cannot be otherwise, my lord,” she said softly. “No matter what we might wish, it cannot.”
He sighed, and looked down, and whatever spell had been cast between them was broken. He pulled another copy of the play from inside his coat and opened it on the table, pressing the pages flat. “Then let us begin with the first scene.”
Dutifully she opened her own copy, and bowed her head over the pages even if her eyes failed to make out the words. She’d gotten exactly what she’d wished, and what was undeniably for the best.
So why, then, did she feel as if she’d lost?
For Rivers, the next two weeks were simultaneously the most rewarding of his life, and the most frustrating. The rewarding part came from all he was able to accomplish with Lucia. Although he’d entered this wager assuming that he could be a most excellent tutor, he hadn’t realized how much more important it was to have an excellent student.
Lucia was every teacher’s dream: she was clever and quick, as ready to ask a thoughtful question as she was to give an answer to his. She was acutely aware of how much she had to accomplish in a limited number of days, and she worked feverishly hard on whatever he assigned. He wondered if she ever slept, for she always seemed both to have been long awake before he rose and after he’d said good night and retired to his own rooms. He knew because there were some nights when his thoughts were too busy for sleep, and he would go walking with Spot, and while every other window in the Lodge might be dark, there would still be candlelight shining from her corner of the house.
She learned her lines without flaw, and she’d improved her diction, her mannerisms, her posture. As her confidence grew, she stood straighter, with more and more presence when she entered a room. She’d outdone Garrick’s instructions for a natural approach to the point that she’d practically become Ophelia, and he was almost as proud of her as she was of herself.
There were, however, several grave areas that needed improvement. While she was very good at playing scenes in the drawing room, she had difficulty projecting her voice and making her gestures grand enough to carry to the farthest seats of a playhouse. She occasionally became so enraptured by her lines that she stood immobile, and forgot to add the gestures that would bring her part to life. The hint of her Neapolitan accent was charming, but the working-class-London accent that accompanied it remained a sizable challenge, and though Rivers continued to correct the most egregious and broad-voweled examples, she still would not convince anyone that she’d been born a lady in the royal court of Denmark.
But of course the single greatest challenge had nothing to do with her acting, and simply everything to do with her. Ever since they’d agreed—and wisely, too—that what had happened that night in his room must never happen again, he had perversely thought of doing exactly that, and much more besides.
It didn’t matter that she had behaved in a manner that was completely without fault, a model of propriety. The smallest things about her enticed him: a tiny wisp of hair, escaped from her cap and dancing free against the nape of her neck, the huskiness of her laugh over some canine foolishness by Spot, the way she’d tip back her head to watch the swallows wheel in the sky above the stable, or how her eyes would brighten whenever she smiled at him. She might not have been born with a dancer’s rhythm, but the grace was effortlessly there in every beguiling twist and turn of her neatly curving figure. If her hand or arm grazed his by accident, he felt as if he’d touched a burning coal.
He knew she felt the tension, too. He’d seen the unabashed longing in her eyes when she looked at him, and heard the little catch in her breathing whenever they touched, and the small bursts of temper that she’d show during a difficult session he guessed were due more to the frustration of their situation than to any mere words—even words by Shakespeare.
It all combined to make working closely with her day and night the greatest delight and the greatest torment. And then, on the Tuesday morning of the third week, came the lesson that changed everything.
They were in the green parlor as usual. Most of the breakfast things had been cleared away, but both his coffee and her tea remained in case of necessary fortification. Likely they would need it, too, for once again her vowels were presenting their mutual torment.
“Cake, not ‘cyke,’ ” he corrected for what seemed like the millionth time. “Can you truly not hear the difference?”
“Ca-a-a-yke,” she said, beginning well but sliding backward into the murkiness, her face screwed up with the effort.
His expression darkened. He would not see this entire project destroyed by a piece of cake.
“Cake, Lucia,” he said. “C-a-a-ake.”
“Ca-a-a-yke,” she said.
He sighed. “C-A-A-AKE.”
“Oh, blast your infernal cake!” she cried, sweeping dramatically from her chair to stalk across the room. She stopped at the window, arms flailing dramatically toward the flowers, while Spot rose and left Rivers’s side to go stand by her in sympathy. “Not one person in all the playhouses in London will be as picky as you are, my lord, nor so provoking, either.”
At least she had her grand gestures correct this morning. “Lucia, please. Histrionics such as these accomplish nothing.”
“Vowels be th’ very trial, don’t they, Spot?” she said to Spot and pointedly not to Rivers, crouching down beside the dog. “We don’t care nawt for them, an’ t’the very divil they may go.”
“What was that, Lucia?” Rivers said, startled. It wasn’t what she’d said that surprised him, but the way she’d said it. She’d spoken exactly as the Yorkshire stable boy who was responsible for washing Spot did, imitating his accent flawlessly and without a hint of her own.
“Did y’hear something, Spot?” she said to the dog, whose tail whipped happily at the attention, and perhaps the accent as well. “I dinna, did you?”
“Lucia, look at me,” Rivers said. “Why is it you can copy Ned’s accent so perfectly, and yet cannot grasp the proper voice for Ophelia?”
She rose, and slowly turned as he’d bidden.
“Why, my lord?” she said, still cross. “Perhaps it’s because I can hear Ned every day, which isn’t the way with noble Danish ladies, least not that I’ve seen.”
“That is not the point,” he said, refusing to let her distract him. “If you spoke like a lady from the Danish royal court, no one in London would understand you, either.”
“Now there’s the problem, isn’t it, my lord.” She grandly flung her arms open. “And isn’t it what I’ve said all along? If they don’t know, how can they care?”
“Because they’ll want you to sound like a lady,” he insisted. “And you do so have an example to copy. Forget the vowels and everything else. Just imitate me.”
“You, my lord?” That surprised her, and her eyes widened. “Oh, my lord, I couldn’t do that. It would be wicked rude of me.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” He joined her at the window, determined to discover if the key to correcting her speech could really be this simple. “I’ve spent my entire life around the royal court and amongst the people there. Copy me, and you’ll have Ophelia’s accent exactly right.”
She gazed up at him, doubtful. “You are certain of this, my lord? You will not be angry, or take insult?”
“I give you my word that I shall not,” he said. “Go on. Prove to me you can do it.”
“Very well, my lord.” She took a deep breath and turned her back to him, the way she always did when composing herself to perform.
While she did, he realized he was holding his breath, and pointedly let it out. He really didn’t know what to expect, given that it was Lucia.
He hadn’t long to wait. When she turned around, she’d squared her shoulders and made her chin jut up. She’d puffed out her chest, which was made all the more noticeable by how she clasped her hands behind her waist, and somehow she looked down her nose at him, a rare feat considering how much taller he was than she.
“Do it,” she said, pitching her voice gruff and low. “I expect nothing less from you. Come along, come along, don’t tarry.”
He stared at her. The effect was uncanny, and also disturbing. What was he to make of this miniature female version of himself?
She raked one hand back through her hair, ignoring how the gesture pulled her hair half-free and scattered hairpins, and scowled darkly.
“Don’t make me wait any further,” she said. “What do you wish of me in return? Damnation, I’ve already given you my word as a gentleman.”
“I can’t possibly sound as pompous as that,” he exclaimed. “Am I really so vastly righteous?”
“Vastly righteous,” she repeated with the exact same inflections.
He grunted. “You’re grumbling and growling like a wild beast.”
“That’s how you sound, my lord,” she protested, reverting to her own voice and accent. “You promised you wouldn’t—”
He could see the uncertainty flash across her face, for deep down she understood the importance of this. It was one thing to make a jest of him, but quite another to do this seriously.
“I shall try, my lord,” she said slowly and carefully. “Is this better? Do I sound as you wish me to be?”
“More,” he said, barely containing his excitement. “ ‘O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!’ ”
“ ‘O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!’ ” she said, and grinned. “That’s it, my lord, isn’t it? I can tell by how you’re looking at me. That’s what you wanted?”
“I believe it is, Lucia.” Gone were the flattened vowels of Whitechapel, and in their place were the fulsome, rounded ones of St. James’s Square. It wasn’t quite perfect, but close, very close, and with another week’s worth of practice, she’d be able to fool any playhouse audience. “It is.”
She yelped with joy and impulsively threw her arms around his shoulders to hug him. Automatically he pulled her close, unable to resist holding her the way he’d been so desperately longing to. Her breasts crushed against his chest, exactly as he’d remembered, and her waist was small and her hips rounded and her mouth was only inches away from his and damnation he must not do this.
Reluctantly he disentangled himself from her and set her down, and apart from himself.
“You are, ah, to be congratulated, Mrs. Willow,” he said deliberately. “You have succeeded beyond my highest expectations.”
“I’m sorry, my lord, I didn’t mean to do that,” she said in a breathless fluster as she smoothed her hair. “Our arrangement and all.”
“The arrangement.” He cleared his throat momentously, and felt like a fool for doing so. “Of course.”
“Oh, of course, my lord,” she said, making no more sense than he had. “I was—I was overcome.”
Overcome: well, that summed it up, didn’t it? Knowing she felt the same as he did wasn’t helping his composure one bit. Her cheeks were flushed and her kerchief had slipped just enough that he could see how rapidly her breasts were rising and falling above the stiffened edge of her bodice, and he must not think of this.
“Let us take the lessons out-of-doors,” he said abruptly. “A brisk walk through the garden will do us both a world of good.”
“Yes, my lord,” she murmured. She was well aware of how much her eyes betrayed her emotions, and she bowed her head to hide them from him now as they stepped through the door and into the garden.
The morning was perfect for June, with brilliant blue skies overhead and a soft breeze in the air. Spot bounded ahead, equally glad to be outside, and clumsily flushed several indignant birds from the hedges. In weighty silence, they walked around the perimeter of the rose garden twice before at last he spoke.
“We shall be traveling to Newbury this afternoon,” he said. They were walking side by side, with him purposefully keeping his hands clasped behind him to keep them from the temptation she represented. “You and I shall have business there.”
She glanced at him sharply. “Business, my lord?”
“Yes.” What with all the overcoming, he’d nearly forgotten the surprise he’d planned for her for this day. “It’s high time that Mrs. Willow had some clothes more befitting her station. Mrs. Currie is an accomplished mantua-maker whom even my stepmother has employed on occasion. She will be expecting us.”
She stopped walking, her expression wary. “A mantua-maker is to make new clothes for me, my lord?”
He stopped, too. “Yes, she is,” he said. “Consider it a small celebration in honor of your achievement this morning.”
“That is most kind of you, my lord,” she said slowly, “but I do not believe I should go.”
“Why shouldn’t you go?” he asked, surprised and disappointed that she wasn’t as pleased as he’d expected. “What woman doesn’t enjoy such a shop? I will, of course, take care of the reckoning. You will not be accountable for whatever fripperies you choose, if that is your concern.”
“It is, my lord, but not how you think,” she said darkly, folding her arms over her chest. “It’s one thing for me to be here at the Lodge as your guest, but another altogether if I were to accept costly clothes made by a mantua-maker that you have paid for. I’d be no better than every other doxie you’ve had here, wouldn’t I?”
“No, you would not,” he said testily. He knew her well enough to understand that when she folded her arms like that, she meant it as a kind of self-protection, a way of reassuring herself when she was upset. Usually he found the gesture poignant, and it reminded him of how difficult her life had been until now.
But today his obstreperous male brain could only focus on how those folded arms were pressing her breasts upward, in a fashion that he couldn’t avoid noticing.
He cleared his throat again, as if that would help. “I should hope that you would realize by now that there has never been the veritable parade of doxies through the Lodge—or through my bed—that you believe. Not even your cousin came here.”
She frowned, unconvinced. “Forgive me, my lord, but the way Mrs. Barber and Sally treat me says I’m not the first woman to have been brought here.”
“There have been one or two,” he admitted. “Most recently there was a most unfortunate mistake with a young woman who behaved more like a ninny than a doxie. Most likely that’s what Mrs. Barber recalls. But that does not constitute the raging flock of doxies that you imply.”
She didn’t say anything, which was far worse than if she’d raged at him the way Magdalena would have. Why the devil didn’t she realize that she was as far removed from that ninny of an apprentice as the moon was from the sun? Behaving honorably in the face of constant temptation to do otherwise had not been easy, and he would have appreciated a bit of acknowledgment for it, especially this morning. Her suspicion had stung his pride, and he was sorry, very sorry that she still didn’t trust him despite his best, manful efforts.
“I am purchasing clothes for Mrs. Willow as part of the wager,” he continued, “and not because I expect you—or her—to behave in a doxie-like fashion. Why must you think otherwise?”
She ignored his question. “No obligations at all?” she asked warily. “I know you paid my cousin’s mantua-maker’s bills for a time, and the lace-maker’s, and the stay-maker’s, and even her plume-maker’s, and I know what you received in return.”
He kicked his boot at the graveled path in frustration, and Spot skittered ahead, ready to chase the flying small rocks.
“What I expect to receive in return for buying you clothes, and stays, and laces, and even plumes, if you desire them, is the sum of the winning wager, payable by Everett,” he said with excruciating patience. “I consider the purchases part and parcel of creating the actress known as Mrs. Willow. She requires the proper costuming for her role. You can’t very well present yourself to a stage manager dressed as you are.”
He had wanted to sound patient; instead he realized he was sounding merely disgruntled and a little petulant, neither of which were agreeable qualities, and he kicked the gravel again.
He heard her sigh beside him, doubtless at how pathetically unmanly he was being.
“Forgive me, my lord,” she said at last, her voice small and contrite. “You are right, and I am wrong. If you had merely wished to seduce me, then you would have done it by now. You would have done it just now, in the parlor. You could have ravished me then and there, yet you didn’t. If that was all you wanted from me, you wouldn’t have bothered with correcting my vowels.”
“That is true,” he said quickly, wishing with both his heart and his cock that she hadn’t mentioned ravishing. “I gave you my word, and I will not break it. We shall put aside that last little, ah, transgression, and continue to abide by our agreement.”
“Yes, my lord, your word, and our agreement,” she said, and sighed again. “You truly are a gentleman. Please forgive me for doubting you.”
He grunted. He didn’t like her apologizing to him any more than she liked it when he did it, and it didn’t help that while she wasn’t doubting him, he was noticing how the breeze was teasing at the kerchief tucked into her bodice and over those maddening breasts, threatening to pull it free.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said gruffly. “Now come, let us walk through the gardens.”
He stalked off ahead of her, determined to leave this conversation behind. She followed, but brought the conversation with her.
“Thank you, my lord, for understanding,” she said, a little breathless from keeping pace with him. “You’ve always been so kind to me, and so generous, even when I didn’t deserve it. It’s only because this wager has been so…so difficult. I don’t wish to be quarrelsome, especially not to you, but santo cielo, these weeks have been a trial to me. A regular trial.”
“I can imagine.” They’d been a trial for him as well, though likely not in the same way she was intending. “I have not always been an easy tutor to you. But you have been so apt a pupil, and have made such spectacular progress in your studies, that surely you must believe the trials have been worth their trouble.”
She nodded, leaving him to decide whether she agreed, or was simply being distracted by the flowers. Either was possible, especially once they entered the rose garden.
She gasped with wonder as soon as he opened the gate. “Oh, my lord!” she exclaimed. “Look at the roses! Look at them!”
Nodding obediently, Rivers tried to do as she asked. The first red roses were already in bloom, and the air was heady with their scent. He’d always taken them for granted. The precisely tended bushes, each in their perfectly squared beds, had been designed to make a pretty show for guests taking breakfast in the back parlor, and he’d always found their beauty a bit too lush, a bit too predictable, to be genuine.
Lucia, however, had no such reservations. She stopped directly in the middle of the raked gravel path and flung out her arms as if to embrace the entire garden. She tipped back her head so the sun washed over her face beneath the curving brim of her flat straw hat, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply.
“Such a beautiful smell, my lord,” she exclaimed without opening her eyes. “I know poets write of lying in a bed of roses, but I should rather have this, to be surrounded by this smell, without any of the prickly thorns.”
“It’s not just any old poet who wrote that,” he said. “It was Christopher Marlowe.”
With her eyes closed, he could unabashedly study her face. She’d blossomed like a flower herself here in the country, with enough to eat and no more of the unappreciated physical toil for others that destroyed the soul. The circles beneath her eyes were gone and the sickly pallor replaced by a charmingly plump rosiness. No one would overlook her now, not when she looked like this.
“Christopher Marlowe, my lord?” she asked without opening her eyes. “Should I know of him? Has he written plays, too, or only poems?”
“A few,” he said. Hamlet was enough for her to consider at present without tossing Marlowe into the mix as well. “His plays are not the fashion now.”
She opened her eyes and lowered her chin. “Then why speak of him at all, my lord?”
“Because he wrote quite splendid verse,” Rivers said, reciting for her.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.
Lucia smiled, her joy in the words and images lighting her face as surely as the sun had, and sending a little lurch to his chest.
“Oh, my lord, that is splendid,” she declared. “Is there more to it?”
Of course there was more. There was an entire poem. But he’d be damned, doubly damned, if he recited all of The Passionate Shepherd to her now. Come live with me and be my love indeed. What kind of infernal mischief in his brain had made him think, after all that had happened earlier, standing in the middle of a rose garden and quoting Marlowe to her would be a wise idea.
“There is more, but it’s mostly about sheep,” he said quickly, hoping to distract her. “Come, there’s another garden here you haven’t seen. This way, through this gate.”
“Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed, even as she followed him. “But will you answer me one question about Mr. Marlowe’s poem, my lord?”
“Mr. Mar-loh,” he corrected almost without thinking. “Mar-loh.”
She sighed with dutiful frustration. “Will you answer me one question about Mr. Mar-loh’s poem, my lord?”
“If I can,” he said, albeit reluctantly. The last thing he wished to do was discuss all the swoony, erotic overtones of the poem.
“It’s the kirtle, my lord,” she said. “What exactly might that be?”
He wanted to laugh with relief. “It’s only a gown of some sort,” he said. “An old-fashioned garment, much enhanced by the flowers. Here’s the other garden I wish you to see.”
He held the old oak door open for her to step inside, and she laughed as Spot ungallantly pushed ahead of her. He was glad that she’d laughed, and glad, too, that he’d decided to lead her here.
Later he’d think back to this decision, and wonder why and how he’d made it, and consider all that had occurred because of it.
But not yet. Now all he did was follow her inside the garden, and let the heavy oak door fall shut after them.