It actually took five days, but by noon of that day, Pierson had finished putting the library to rights—shelving the books he wanted on the lower shelves, sending the more tattered volumes out to be rebound and consigning the poetry volumes and literary essays to the top shelf.
He had no need of flowery speeches and declarations of love so close at hand.
Bad enough he had a tempting miss trespassing in his gardens.
As for his papers, he’d culled and tidied them until everything in the library was orderly and lined up.
Like proper battalions, he mused as he gazed at the shelves, ignoring Hannibal, who was yet again curled up and napping on the chair by the fireplace. The wretched beast arrived each day, uninvited, and made himself at home—as if he found the viscount’s muttering and curses soothing.
“Well, this is your last day to cadge about,” the viscount told the cat, who looked up with his one eye and twitched one of his battered ears, a dismissive sort of wave.
If you think so, the cat seemed to say as he defiantly tucked his nose back into the curl of his tail and returned to his indulgent snooze.
“Yes, well, I haven’t given up the notion of building a trebuchet,” Pierson replied, setting aside any thought of Hannibal’s mistress—who, he would note, was just as stubborn and defiant and in need of a good toss over the wall. Instead, he took another look around his library and, with a bit of jaunty pride to his hobbling gait, made his way to the dining room.
After days of avoiding the place—since it overlooked the gardens—the wafting odor of pie and something else as mouthwatering lured him away from his usual tray. But once there, the remarkable repast of ham, pigeon pie and—inhaling deeply—fresh tarts, awaiting him held little appeal as he found himself driven to the French doors.
And the garden beyond.
To his relief—as he stole a glance through an opening in the curtains—there was no sign of Miss Tempest, though her work was in evidence nearly everywhere he looked.
Without even thinking about it, he pushed open the doors, and wandered into the middle of the garden.
The side that bordered Lord Charleton’s wall had been transformed. Beds spaded. Plants trimmed and tied upright. Even the path had been raked, the overturned stones no longer black with soot. The roses looked ready for their summer glory.
But the other half of the garden—well, that was still in its tangled state, standing in stark contrast to Miss Tempest’s labors. But then again, it was going to take a carpenter to get the wooden arbor straightened, and the patience of Job to get the knotted herb garden back in its proper shape.
As for the lady, there was no sign of her.
“Given up, have you, Miss Tempest?” he said aloud, feeling a bit smug.
“No, not at all,” came the reply.
He turned around and found her standing in the open gate. Where the old battered oak door had creaked, groaned and refused to open much more than to let a cat through, now it slid open silently and widely—enough to let in an interfering miss without so much as a warning.
She stood in the entrance, certainly not dressed for London, but looking, he imagined, as she did every day in whatever that small village of hers was, ready for a day of—oh, fustian, what had she said? Oh, yes, “taking people under her wing.”
Or as he preferred, pestering them.
But he had to admit if he was going to be hectored by anyone, this miss—with her large straw bonnet, her dark hair coiling down her shoulder in a single long braid, and wearing a bright yellow gown as sunny as her smile—left him willing to be ordered about. For the time being.
Still, he’d let himself be taken to the rack before he confessed this, but she was utterly fetching like this—all simply done.
London, he realized, would ruin all that.
And that was a terrible shame.
“You’ve been remiss,” he said before he could stop himself. “Neglecting your labors.” Rebellious, unwanted labors.
He nodded toward the impossible-looking tangle of clematis and ivy—enough to make an army of gardeners weep, hoping they might deter her. Send her scurrying back from whence she came.
“I’ve had other obligations,” she told him, strolling into his yard without so much as a by-your-leave. She set her basket down and began to dig into one of the beds. “Besides, you banned me from your house—not the gardens.”
“So I was informed.” When an uncomfortable silence settled between them, he spoke again, if only to say something other than the words he knew he should be uttering, My apologies, Miss Tempest.
Instead he continued quite blandly, or rather safely, by saying, “You’ve accomplished much here.”
She glanced around, surveying her work, and then went back to her digging. “It helps pass the time.”
“Shouldn’t you be out shopping?” he asked, pulling forth his memories of his sister Margaret’s Season. “Taking tea and charming patronesses for vouchers?”
To his surprise, she sort of shuddered at the suggestions. “I prefer to be useful.”
Useful. The word struck a chord inside him.
He’d been anything but since he’d come home, much to his mother’s dismay. Especially when he’d made it all too clear he had no intention of finding another match once Melliscent cried off. Instead, he’d buried himself inside his library, writing and compiling his research. Neglecting his lordly obligations.
Whatever else could he do? He’d come home broken and damaged. Why didn’t everyone else see that? Understand?
Still, something about the longing in her voice plucked at a nerve inside him. “Yes, well, be thankful you can be that.” He held out his cane. “I’m not so lucky.”
She set down her trowel and gazed at him. “Whatever has your cane to do with being useful?”
There it was again. Her stubborn defiance. Yet this time, Pierson felt a slight chill run down his spine. Was it anger or something else, he wasn’t sure, but he answered with nothing less than lofty indignation as he had so many times before. “I cannot ride. I cannot dance. I can’t even climb up into my curricle, which makes me barely a gentleman.”
She arched a brow. Barely a gentleman, indeed. But thankfully she did not wade through that door, and instead just shook her head and went back to digging.
Well, more like stabbing the dirt.
Nor was she done. “You can still speak, can you not?”
“Well, I—”
“And have opinions?”
“Of course, but—”
“And think for yourself?” But apparently not finish a sentence, for she stopped her labors and turned to face him. “And sit in the House of Lords? You can sit?”
He blanched a bit at this. Demmit, of course he could sit, but she didn’t understand. And frustrated by her disbelief and her annoyance with him, he blustered into the verbal hole she’d dug.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m not the same man I once was. I’ve made a mess of things.”
“Then clean it up,” she said with that inarguable no-nonsense advice that she gave so easily.
But he was ready this time. “That’s impossible.” His words came out in a tone that brooked no argument, for they came with the memory of Poldie dying. Bleeding from a wound that should have been Pierson’s.
He couldn’t bring back Poldie.
“If you say so,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and glancing around for the trowel.
Her disbelief left him dumbfounded. Just like that she could so blithely dismiss his pain? He shifted so he towered above her. “Sometimes you cannot bring back what is lost. You just cannot.”
And if he expected more arguments from her, he was wrong, for in that moment, his words fell upon her and the weight of them sagged her shoulders down in defeat.
“Yes,” she said softly, winding her fingers around the trowel. “Sometimes a thing is lost forever.” She paused for a second and then went back to work, as if that was all she could do.
Anything he had been about to say fled in the face of her admission. Whatever had she lost? It was no trifle, that he knew. So what was it, or rather who was it, who had left her words, her heart, so full of regret?
Regrets he knew only too well.
He paused for a moment as he got his bearings—the garden hadn’t been this tidy for years and he’d nearly forgotten what was where—information he knew only because his mother had taken great pride in her small green space, bringing him and his sisters out to play while she worked among her “other dear flowers,” as she called her beloved plants.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he realized where she was digging.
“Planting strawberries,” she said over her shoulder. “They will do nicely here.”
Strawberries? Tempting reminders of her lips sprang to mind, but he swept those aside. Stepping forward, he leaned over and took the spade from her hands—nearly forgetting his own rule of never touching her.
He straightened quickly. “You cannot dig about wherever you may. Especially not there.”
“Actually, I already have,” she told him, reaching up to take back the shovel and willfully stabbing the ground with it.
“There are tulips planted there,” he told her. He didn’t know much about gardening, but that much he did know.
“There were,” she replied, as if digging up someone’s garden was well within her purveyance.
Pierson drew a deep breath. “Were? Why you insolent, busybody—”
As he drew another breath, she glanced up at him. “I believe the words you are looking for are plain and harridan.”
That stopped him, for he had a fleeting memory of using those exact words the other day in Charleton’s study. But however would she know that unless she’d been . . .
He glanced down at her and recalled this was the same minx who’d fired and hired a cook without his blessing, cleaned out his closets and dug about his garden as if it were hers.
Why wouldn’t she eavesdrop?
And while she should be ashamed of such disgraceful conduct, it was Pierson who felt the pang of guilt. He’d called her that and worse. Plain. A harridan. All in an attempt to steer Tuck away from her.
For what end?
So he could kiss her . . .
Though right now, the only way he wanted to touch Miss Tempest was to wring her neck. How dare she destroy his mother’s tulip patch. Meddle in his life . . .
Dig up memories he wanted no part of . . .
“Yes, well,” Miss Tempest continued, “if you are done haranguing me, I have work to finish.” Her implication was that he might not understand what that meant. And to prove her point, she stabbed the ground again with her spade, this time as if she were planting it into something more meaningful.
Like his back.
“Stop!” he ordered. “Those tulips—how could you?” His mother would be furious. More so than she already was with him.
“Good heavens, Lord Wakefield. If you don’t want me—”
And there her words stopped. Either consciously or accidentally, he didn’t know which. Not that it mattered.
For there they were. Right there out in the open.
If you don’t want me.
She glanced up at him, those honest, open eyes of hers looking at him. Searching for something.
Most likely an apology. A confession. A declaration. For what she had said wasn’t true. And perhaps they both knew it.
He did want her.
And when he’d held her, kissed her, listened to that soft mew of desire that had slipped from her lips and teased him more than her fingers winding into the folds of his waistcoat as she’d pulled herself closer to him, he knew she wanted him as well.
But as quickly as the moment had come upon them, it passed and she looked away, saying, “I haven’t done anything to your tulips. I merely moved them.” She paused and pointed to a bed directly across from the dining room windows. “Over there. You must plant things where they are meant to be—so they will flourish. Next spring, and every spring after, you will be able to enjoy them from the dining room instead of having them hidden away over here.”
In his anger, he nearly missed what she was saying—for he was still trying to reconcile the fact that she had come into his garden and started moving things about without his permission. But those words, Next spring and every spring after, pushed forth a memory he’d long forgotten.
A memory that bloomed within him.
“My father said that once,” he managed, more for himself than for her.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Your father?”
“He brought those bulbs back from Amsterdam—for my mother—before they were married, or even betrothed.”
“He wooed her with bulbs?” Miss Tempest asked, her eyes alight with mirth. “A rather unconventional choice. I thought gentlemen were supposed to charm ladies with actual blossoms.”
Pierson laughed, despite himself. “I didn’t think romance was something you concerned yourself with.”
Miss Tempest sniffed. “Just because I have no intention of marrying doesn’t mean I’m blind to the process.”
“But are you immune?” he asked before he could stop the words.
What he really wanted to know was if their kiss had affected her as well.
“Quite,” she told him with a defiant glance, as if she wanted him to challenge her.
To kiss her again, to hold her . . . but, oh, it was too dangerous.
And she seemed to sense that as well. “You were saying about your father—”
He nodded in agreement. Not so much about continuing his story but to leave that other subject, the unmentionable one, alone.
For now.
“It’s more about my mother, I suppose,” Pierson told her. “She was quite a beauty—still is quite striking, if all the old blades who propose to her every year can be believed.”
“She sounds indomitable,” Miss Tempest remarked.
“Something like that,” he admitted. Stubborn and proud and had loved her husband too dearly to ever marry again.
“Why did she choose your father and his tulip bulbs?”
He nodded as he went back to the story. “She led a merry chase her first Season—with scores of suitors and proposals—but she had turned them all down. Just before the next Season, my father was called to be part of the delegation to Paris for the treaty—which left him stricken, for he was determined to have her and now all his rivals had a clear field. He returned just as it was rumored that my mother was to be betrothed to a duke who had famously declared he would have her hand. And when my father arrived, he went straight from the ship to my grandfather’s house. And there in the foyer, filled with flowers from all her other suitors, he offered my mother a basket of bulbs—and declared that what he had brought her was a bouquet of flowers that would come to her every spring for the rest of her life.”
And if it was possible, Miss Tempest appeared to be without a retort, for there in her eyes was a mist of tears.
She who proclaimed herself quite immune to romance. And as if to prove herself a most practical miss, she dashed the evidence away with her sleeve.
But now he knew the truth: she was as tenderhearted as Bitty.
At least so he thought.
“That is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard,” Miss Tempest admitted. “Your father sounds quite the romantic devil.” She picked up her basket and began sorting through the bits of roots and greenery she’d brought to plant. “You don’t take after him much, do you, my lord?”
Louisa tried her best to bite back those impertinent words as they tumbled from her lips. Whatever was she doing?
Flirting. The word rose up like a promise and a caution.
She was flirting with Lord Wakefield.
When she’d opened the garden gate and seen him standing there, surveying her work, she should have silently turned around and fled.
But she hadn’t. She couldn’t. For as much as she should be well and done with him and his shouting and his bluster, she couldn’t help holding on to her suspicions that with time, his thorny paw would heal, and he’d find his way to be the man who scratched Hannibal’s head when no one was looking.
Not for her, certainly. But for a lady worthy of his heart.
So she’d waded in, and now it seemed she’d dived headfirst into this folly.
Flirting with him. And somewhere, somewhere quite deep inside her, she knew why.
Because ever since he’d kissed her, pulled her into his arms and teased her awake, she’d been unable to think of anything else.
Other than his kiss.
She turned back to her basket of strawberry starts. Of course she wasn’t flirting. She hadn’t the least idea how to gain a man’s interest.
Not unless one counted tripping over his boots.
And glancing over her shoulder up at the glowering figure behind her, she thought Lord Wakefield certainly wasn’t the sort of man upon whom one might practice such an art.
He looked positively ready to dump her basket of starts atop her head.
Which would probably serve her right.
And then it happened.
He began to laugh. It started as a guffaw, and then he truly laughed. The sort that rolled freely from him.
And from his surprised expression, she suspected he hadn’t made such a merry sound in a very long time.
The other part of his deep mirth was that it was entirely infectious.
And all too soon, Louisa was giggling—which then turned into a rather unladylike display that had her holding her sides, her basket and trowel forgotten.
“Oh, goodness, I’ve never said such an impertinent thing in my entire life.”
“I doubt that,” he told her as he settled down on the grass beside her, eyeing her with a wry expression. “Who would have thought you such a tease, Louisa—”
“I am no such—” She came to a blinding halt. Louisa? “My lord, you shouldn’t—”
“What? Call you by your name? I have certain rights left, even if you are determined to usurp all of them.” He smiled at her. “You may call me Pierson.”
“I shall not,” she told him tartly. That would never do.
“You will,” he told her.
She sniffed at his presumption. Call him by his Christian name, indeed. It was too intimate, too forward.
Like kissing him in his linen closet?
“Still,” he was saying, “you won’t last long in London society if you speak your mind so freely. Take me, for example. It is only through the greatest of restraint that I haven’t sent you packing over that garden wall. You and that dreadful beast you insist is a cat.” He leaned closer and picked up a strawberry section that had fallen from the basket. He studied it for a moment, and then set it back with the others. When he glanced at her, he winked.
Cheeky devil! Who would have thought it? Lord Wakefield had a sense of humor.
“I have no intention of lasting in society,” she told him, looking around for her trowel. “I’m only here to—”
“Yes, yes, I know. To see your sister well matched. But I would think that now that you’ve seen a bit of London, and with Lady Aveley’s tutelage, you would have changed your mind.”
Was he speaking of finding a husband or something else . . .
Like a kiss.
“Not at all,” she told him with every bit of finality she could muster, and glanced around for her trowel.
As if that could stop the rogue. And just as Lord Charleton had said, Wakefield was a rogue. At least he had the bloodlines of one.
Bother her curiosity, for the other day she’d gone and looked him up in Debrett’s—running her finger down the listing of the Stratton family line until there in the Elizabethan dynasty had been her answer.
One of his forebears had been the daughter of a Spanish diplomat, who was also rumored to be a pirate.
Louisa couldn’t help wondering what other traits that reckless daughter with her beguiling Mediterranean manners and bewitching glances had brought into such a very English lineage—besides the searching dark eyes and bombastic nature.
Passion. Endless, deep passion, whispered her own desires.
Their eyes met, and for a blinding second, Louisa felt herself falling, thinking he might kiss her yet again.
But to her relief—and chagrin—he settled back. “Truly? Not even a thought of finding a husband?”
“Good heavens, no!” she said with more feeling than was probably proper.
Again, he laughed at her. “So you keep saying—but one of these days some gentleman is going to set his sights upon you and be stricken in love—then you’ll be his problem and not mine.” He grinned at her, reaching across her and into her basket, plucking out a large bundle of roots and handing it to her.
“Now who is teasing?” Louisa took his offering and divided it further and then tucked the plants into the ground. “I am hardly the sort to inspire such passion.”
“You inspire me,” he told her.
Now it was Louisa’s turn to laugh. “Inspire you? To what, violence?”
“Well, I will admit, you vex me to no end, but I suspect Lady Aveley will have you off to Almack’s soon enough, and then you’ll become the next Original or Diamond or whatever it is that every fool chases after these days, and you’ll have no more time for me. Therefore, I can afford to be generous today.”
“As it is, we are off to Almack’s this very night.” She knew she should be giddy with joy over the prospect, but the idea only filled her with dread.
Nor had Lady Aveley’s assurances of a successful evening given her much comfort.
You’ll meet all the best of society.
All Louisa could see was a sea of expensively trimmed hems waiting to be stepped on.
“Tonight?” Lord Wakefield laughed. “Isn’t that right into the devil’s snare?”
“Excuse me?” She’d never heard the hallowed hall called that.
“For a lady who professes not to want to marry—”
“I don’t. It is my sister who is determined to find a match. And someone has to—”
“Yes, yes. Keep an eye on her.” The viscount’s lips turned up mischievously. “Is your sister as . . . as . . .”
“As?”
“Cowhanded?” he asked with a laugh.
Louisa’s mouth opened in a moue of protest, but she could hardly deny the matter.
Still . . .
“That isn’t very polite—” she began.
“I have a box of broken vases and crockery that might disagree.”
“Lord Wakefield, you are a dreadful tease,” she said, going back to her labors. After a few moments she offered an answer. “She’s worse.”
He rolled back and laughed. “Serves my uncle right. And Lady Aveley. Oh, Almack’s will never be the same.”
“Do they have a punch bowl?” she asked tentatively.
“A large one,” he said, looking as if he was going to ask the next question: Is it in danger? But didn’t.
He probably already knew the answer.
Mortal danger.
As she considered how she could avoid such a fate, she had another question. “You’ve been to Almack’s then?”
The viscount shuddered. “Yes. More times than I care to count.” He glanced toward her basket and began poking at the bundle of roots.
Louisa had the sense that there was more to this revelation, and once again heard Mr. Rowland’s voice as it had come through the door when she’d been eavesdropping.
Melliscent was a rare beauty.
Had the viscount met this Melliscent there, at Almack’s? Walked into the grand room, looked across the glittering array of ladies and misses and fallen in love with her “fair” beauty in a single beat of his heart.
Louisa could see the scene as if she were there—standing in the middle of the crush, a silent observer to a very private moment, only able to watch as Wakefield found a way to be introduced to the lady, when he asked her to dance, and that singular moment when the lady glanced up and into his dark eyes, her own alight with the possibility of love.
“Miss Tempest?” Lord Wakefield snapped his fingers in front of her. “Are you woolgathering on me? Dreaming of some perfect gentleman with tidy linen closets, no doubt.”
She glanced at his bemused expression and then it was her turn to look away, fixing her attention on the task of sorting through the starts she’d convinced Lord Charleton’s greengrocer to secure for her.
Yet it was nigh on impossible to decide which of them to plant and which to discard with him right beside her.
He sent her thoughts racing in a thousand directions. And in her mind’s eye, it wasn’t Melliscent he’d fallen in love with that night.
But her. Miss Louisa Tempest.
Standing in the middle of the crowded room, she was the only lady his eyes beheld. The lady who lit his heart. The one he’d come striding across the room and smiled upon. A man full of confidence and daring, before he’d become this stomping, snarling beast.
She stopped herself right there before she envisioned anything else. Something ruinous.
Such thoughts were exactly what came of reading the Miss Darby novels Harriet Hathaway was always sharing with Lavinia.
Romantic drivel, she’d tell them with disdain, and yet . . . she always read them. Worse, she’d also snuck from the top shelf of Lady Essex’s library one of her French books. The one with pictures . . .
Now when she looked at Lord Wakefield, she could easily understand why the intrepid Miss Darby strayed so often and so close to ruin for the love and affection of her handsome Lieutenant Throckmorten.
Perhaps Throckmorten had Spanish ancestry as well . . . tempting dark eyes and unruly waves of hair that begged a lady to reach out and brush those errant strands back into a respectable queue so he didn’t look quite so piratical.
So utterly desirable . . . which led her thoughts to the French picture book.
Oh, good heavens, Louisa Tempest, she scolded herself, her fingers twitching to do just that. Brush that dark strand of his hair back off the side of his face, to run her fingers over the stubble there, to feel the hard lines of his lips before they came crashing down atop hers . . .
Instead, she rubbed her nose and went back to work. But her resolve to finish her task quickly diverted as she stole yet another glance at him as he too picked through the strawberry starts. All of a sudden she realized something about him was different.
Entirely so.
Here he was, sprawled out on the lawn beside her, and he was hardly snapping at her. And only mildly threatening to toss her over the wall. And he hadn’t sent Mrs. Petchell and her orphans packing as he’d once threatened. In fact, he’d been teaching Bob to read, insisting that the boy be taught so he could be “of some use.”
“If you have no desire to go to Almack’s, don’t go,” he said with that air of authority—the one that a man who had led others and was used to being obeyed threw out so simply.
She shook her head. “I must go. Lady Aveley went to great lengths to secure vouchers.”
“Must go,” he repeated, and laughed. “You’ll change your mind when you get there and all the fellows descend to scrape about at your hemline.”
“Scrape at my hemline, indeed. Lord Wakefield, I am hardly the type to inspire such madness.”
He tipped his head and studied her for a moment. “No, I suppose you aren’t,” he finally declared.
This took her back a bit. “Well, thank you,” she finally managed, a small part—oh, bother, a rather large portion—of her heart quaking at his honesty.
“Oh, don’t look so put out with me. I only meant that you’ll hardly be reckoned a Diamond if you parade about with that smudge on your nose,” he said, nodding at her, and then digging into the pocket of his jacket. With a handkerchief now in his grasp, he reached out and gently began to wipe the top of her nose.
His touch left her mesmerized. She didn’t dare raise her lashes, allow herself the danger of looking up and into his eyes.
Still she could feel the weight of his stare upon her. And worse, by not looking up, all she could see of him was his lips.
Solid, hard, and turned in a tempting, mischievous, one might say devilish, line. And when they parted, his chin moving toward hers, her lashes fluttered open and heaven help her, she couldn’t stop herself.
She looked up and into his eyes.
That was a mistake.
Lost. I am lost.
And this time, when Louisa Tempest tumbled, she fell headlong into something that could very well mean her ruin.
Pierson tried to tell himself this was folly even as he was moving closer, his head tilted, and he knew what was about to happen.
He’d kiss her. Right here on the lawn, in the garden. Where anyone could see them. And he didn’t care.
For right now she was perfection indeed. And he couldn’t help teasing her a bit. “You are hardly cowhanded now, Miss Tempest. Quite the opposite.”
She’d put a light into his life, and it teased him to come closer. To live again.
She put her hand against his chest and stopped his forward motion. “Then perhaps you’ll come with us tonight.”
All Pierson heard was one word. Tonight.
Then the rest of what she was saying tumbled past his visions of her mahogany hair unbound and falling free. Her lips open and begging to be kissed. Her hands winding around him, pulling him closer . . .
“Perhaps if you came with us . . . to Almack’s . . . then the punch bowl wouldn’t end up . . .” She paused and bit her lips together.
Almack’s?
“Never,” he blurted out, sitting back from her. “I cannot.” I won’t.
“Why not?” she asked, sitting back as well.
“Because I can’t . . . Don’t you see that?”
“I don’t see any such thing,” she replied.
“Louisa, please,” he said, reaching for her, but she drew back.
“Don’t call me that,” she told him. “It isn’t proper.”
But more to the point, he could see the hurt and confusion caused by his refusal to go to Almack’s.
Better she’d prodded him into the House of Lords. But Almack’s? He shuddered. ’Twould be like being tossed to the lions.
He leaned over again, thinking to kiss her, beg her forgiveness, find some way to explain his refusal, but he was thwarted in another way.
“Milord!” came the shout from the kitchen door. “Milord!”
Bob. Impatient and full of importance, he made his announcement with a full measure of his aunt’s fierce determination, and, if Pierson wasn’t mistaken, someone else.
Him. Is that what he sounded like? All bluster and indignation?
“Milord!” the boy repeated. “Aunt wants me to tell you your tea is growing cold, and she didn’t bake those tarts to go to waste.”
Miss Tempest sat up, her cheeks heating as fast as the viscount’s tea was cooling.
“Oh, gar!” Bob said. “I didn’t see you there, miss.”
But seen her he had. Right up close to the viscount. Nearly in his arms.
The boy blinked and then began to stammer again, for it was obvious he didn’t know quite what to do.
But she did.
The lady got up. “You cannot come tonight? Not even for me?”
Pierson looked up at her. “No.” Not even for her.
She nodded once and then turned and quickly crossed the yard, in great long strides and, before he knew it, was through the garden door. “Miss Tempest, wait!” Lord Wakefield called after her as he struggled to rise. “Oh, demmit, come back here,” he ordered, once again all bluff and indignation.
But she didn’t heed him.
And more to the point, he didn’t follow her. He couldn’t. He didn’t dare. Why didn’t anyone else see that?