She climbed stairs to the room at the top of the house, its ceiling narrowing to a point. Like in the attic at Glenhaven Hall, traveling trunks and old furniture were everywhere. She found an unlocked trunk and the pungent scent of camphor balls sprang forth. Then she sighed in sheer pleasure. Drawing out one after another fine gown, tenderly stroking muslin, silk, and wool, she sighed again and missed her own clothing acutely.
Her gaze darted to the next trunk. She reached for it. Slippers, boots, pattens, fichus, petticoats, shifts, stays, ribbons, reticules, garters, stockings, shawls, pelisses, and handkerchiefs with initials embroidered into them—all smelling of camphor—tumbled into her hands. But she didn’t care about the odor. She could live with a wrinkled nose for a day if the rest of her weren’t wrinkled.
She plucked up a gown and held it before her. It was short by several inches. Her petticoat would show. But not if she wore the lady’s petticoat too.
She paused a moment in her head-on rush toward more thievery to consider. But she could not see the crime in it. She would return the garments in neat order before they departed the abbey tomorrow. Also, Wyn wouldn’t care if he saw her ankles. He had threatened a man who jeopardized her safety with a pistol, caressed her intimately while foxed, and walked through a torrential downpour leading her horse for an entire day. And she had seen him—touched him—in his shirtsleeves, without a cravat. Also, she’d made his bed. They may as well be on ankle-glimpsing terms too.
Before she could delay another moment—because Guilt was even now poking up its ugly head—she grabbed a gown of figured blue muslin and an armful of undergarments, slammed the trunks shut with her toes, and hurried down the stairs.
She halted abruptly.
As though arrested in mid-stride, Wyn stood in the corridor in coat and breeches and boots, looking remarkably well and directly at her. Then his gaze dropped to her breasts.
At that moment Diantha discovered another useful thing: standing before a gentleman, in stays and petticoat and in the bright light of day, was not in fact the same as being furtively divested of those garments by him in the darkness. It was thrilling, in a ladies-are-taught-not-to-do-precisely-this-unless-they-are-quite-wanton manner, and she felt not merely underdressed but entirely naked beneath his sober regard. Every inch of her body flushed with heat.
His gaze snapped away and she shoved the borrowed garments in front of her breasts.
“Good day, Miss Lucas,” he said to a floorboard in the region of her bare feet. “It seems you have visited the attic.”
“Yes.” Her tongue was a piece of flypaper on the roof of her mouth. “In search of fresh clothing. Mine is somewhat bedraggled.”
“Ah.” Slowly his gaze traveled from her feet, along her legs, past her hips and the clothing in her arms, to her face. But he said nothing more.
“These smell strongly of camphor,” she mumbled. “But I can probably mask the odor with perfume.” Nerves made her shrug. His attention shifted to her shoulder, then her bare arm.
“I should say so.” He sounded a little hoarse. “Quite a lot of perfume will be necessary, no doubt.”
“I suppose so.”
“Vast quantities.”
“Oh. Yes.”
The horrible awkwardness again, like in the kitchen the previous day. It made her feel a little ill. Ducking around him in the narrow corridor, she ran to her bedchamber, threw the door shut and sank against it.
“What’s gone and frightened you, miss?” Mrs. Polley hurried forward. “Have you seen a ghost?”
Only a man. “Mrs. Polley, I would like to try to look pretty today.”
Her companion crinkled up her brow. But she did as Diantha wished.
In the end it didn’t matter that Mrs. Polley spent a quarter hour arranging Diantha’s hair, or that her gown while reaching barely to her ankles was only moderately creased from storage and the color nearly matched her eyes, nor that the fringe on her paisley shawl fluttered in the breeze like butterfly wings and her shoes were perfectly unexceptionable footwear for a lady. Wyn barely glanced at her as they left the house.
Owen went with them, tossing a stick for Ramses and chattering about the mines.
“I think losing his sister was terribly hard for him,” she said when Owen ran ahead along the canal after the dog. “He speaks so often of the mines.”
“It was his life until recently.” Wyn walked beside her, hands clasped loosely behind his back, black coat and snowy cravat elegant as always, boots sparkling. The sun shone again, golden like a ripe peach, and the breeze was cool slipping across Diantha’s cheeks, which seemed perpetually warm now when he was near.
“She is always in the stories he tells. Perhaps he misses her.”
“Perhaps.”
“You rarely speak of your life.”
He cast her a swift glance. “I haven’t any cause to.”
“A man threatening us with violence seems sufficient cause, if you ask me.”
“Since you cleared away that particular trouble again yesterday without my assistance, the point is moot.”
“I realize I am not supposed to ask after your health, but . . . would you have been able to assist?”
“I am fairly certain you know the answer to that question.”
She did. If he had known she was in danger, he would have done whatever he must to defend her, as he was now defending her even from himself by avoiding drink.
“Then, you are feeling better?”
“As well as can be expected.”
“Would you like your pistol and bullets returned?”
“Yes, thank you.” At a fence that ran with vines of big white flowers, he plucked one and proffered it to her with a bow. “For saving me from the wrath of Duncan Eads.”
She tucked it into her hair. “Well, I could not allow him to kill you.”
“Naturally.” But now he was not smiling.
For the remainder of the walk to the orchard he was unfailingly polite. He remained by her side and said nothing that he might not say to any lady whose acquaintance he had recently made and who had not seen him suffering because she had driven him to it. He assisted her over the stile with a firm hand but held hers only as long as necessary. When they came upon her lost slipper poking from the grass, he restored it to her without comment, as though gentlemen encountered ladies’ footwear along mossy canals every day.
Owen found the bucket and set off for the grove, but he was more interested in eating apples than picking them and soon grew tired of the activity. He waded across the canal flowing swiftly from the rains and threw himself onto the grass on the opposite hill. Ramses followed, settling down with his tongue lolling out.
Then Owen fell asleep, and everything changed, as though the hand of a god who had drawn a curtain now pushed it aside. Approaching her from behind, beneath the boughs of a gnarled old tree, Wyn said, “It seems that you did not don perfume after all.” His voice was low and sent tingles through her.
“I did not.” She turned. In the dappled sunshine falling through the tree branches his eyes seemed to glitter. “I suppose I give off the most horrid aroma of camphor.”
The slightest crease appeared in his cheek. “I would never say so.” He drew forth a cigar he’d carried from the house.
“But you are probably thinking it.”
“No. That is not what I am thinking now.” He moved away. She could not help but follow; it seemed natural to her now, as a bird that did not ponder flying south for the winter but simply did.
“Will you teach me how to smoke?”
He looked over his shoulder, brow raised, the corner of his mouth tilted up. “If you wish.”
“I have always wanted to smoke a cigar but I never before had the opportunity. That is, the opportunity to ask a gentleman who would not think I was a hoyden for asking. But with you that cat is already out of the bag, as it were.”