She huffed out a sigh. “I appreciate that you’re preserving me from your father’s attentions, Mr. Daniels, but I assure you such gallantry is not necessary.”
“Matthew, and perhaps I’m not being gallant, perhaps I’m being selfish.”
He turned her under his arm, surprised to find he’d spoken the truth. A man leaving the military in disgrace was not expected to show his face at London’s fashionable gatherings, and had he done so, few ladies would have stood up with him.
“What was it like growing up in the South?”
Her question was a welcome distraction. “I didn’t. I went to boarding school in Northumbria. I was cold and hungry for most of it.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Why the North?”
Another turn, another opportunity to pull her a bit closer and enjoy the way her height matched with his own. “The North is cheaper, and Altsax isn’t what anybody would call a doting father. I made some friends and spent holidays with them to the extent I could.”
Though those same friends would probably be careful not to recognize him now.
“So you weren’t lonely.”
He distracted her with a daring little spin, one she accommodated easily, and from there, conversation lapsed while Matthew tried to enjoy waltzing with a gorgeous, fragrant woman in his arms.
Her last comment bothered him though. In boarding school, he’d been lonely. The schoolmates who’d taken pity on him for a holiday here or there had not been the sort of companions to provide solace to a boy exiled from his home and family. The military had been a slight improvement, for a time, and then no improvement at all.
As Matthew bowed over the lady’s hand to the final strains of the nocturne, he admitted to himself that he’d been lonely for most of his boyhood as well as most of his military career.
And he was lonely still.
Two
Mary Fran had a soft spot for wounded creatures, and the tall Englishman was nothing more than another wounded creature. The loneliness came through in his silences, in the grim quality of his expression around his father, in the way he watched his sisters as if bandits might seize them and carry them off.
A severely handsome, grave, quiet, broad-shouldered, wounded creature with beautiful, tanned hands. Matthew Daniels’s hands embodied both grace and strength, and even on this family outing through the woods, Mary Fran had occasion to admire them often. Matthew—Mr. Daniels—was a solicitous escort, not like a brother who’d pelt along willy-nilly, dragging her forward as if she were a reluctant bullock.
He would shift his hold on her, grip her hand, link their fingers, or grasp her wrist to guide her over logs she’d been hopping since childhood, or past boulders that were hardly going to rise up and roll directly into her path. This solicitude was… lovely. His attention was also largely silent, and his gaze never suggested anything inappropriate.
She rather wished it would.
“That was a heartfelt sigh, my lady. Shall we tell the others we’re turning around?”
He’d apparently forgotten he had taken hold of her hand, and she wasn’t going to remind him.
“It’s a beautiful summer day, I’m free of my chores, and I have a handsome escort for wandering my own property at my leisure. Maybe it was a sigh of pleasure.”
He liked that answer. She could tell by the way he flattened his lips as if suppressing a smile, and the way his blue eyes lit briefly with humor.
“You regard this land as your property, don’t you?” He shifted his grip again, so their fingers were linked. “Your brothers are almost here at your sufferance.”
“They’re good brothers, but no, I don’t regard the place as my own, really. I wasn’t raised here. None of us were. We spent our childhoods farther west in the mountains and came here from time to time to learn the English and have some schooling. The boys had to go to university. I, of course did not.”
“You would have terrified the professors.”
“Is that a compliment, Mr. Daniels?” And when was he going to release her hand?
“Yes, you may be assured it was.” He reached up with his free hand and held back a drooping branch, so Mary Fran had to duck very close to him to pass. He didn’t step back, and it occurred to her the man was quite possibly doing some English approximation of flirting with her.
Ah, to be flirted with. Not propositioned, not chased, not groped and pinched and leered at… A place in her heart that had been growing cold since her farce of a wedding night felt a small, curling warmth spread through it. To be flirted with…
But the rules of fair play—the English were very big on fair play—decreed she really ought to spare him the effort.
“You could have me, you know. Or I think you could.”
Some subtle, smooth innuendo had been called for—an Englishwoman might have known how to dangle her interest coyly—but worse, far, far worse than Mary Fran’s blunt declaration, was the awful longing she heard in her own voice.
The despair.
He did drop her hand then and turned to face her. “Have you?” His face betrayed nothing. Not shock, not pleasure, not judgment. But that was good, Mary Fran decided. She would have hated to see that calculating, lustful gleam in his eyes, despite her awful, bold words.
Hated to see him glancing around, choosing a tree to brace her against as he rucked up her skirts and unfastened his trousers. Hated it and longed for it. God in heaven.
Her chin came up, but this did little to reestablish her dignity when he was taller than she. She opted for bravado, her usual choice in difficult moments. “I’d dally with you, I think. I’m almost sure of it, in fact. I’m a widow—have been for years. I know all about being a widow.”
He looked… perplexed as he peered down at her. “You know about being a widow.” He regarded her searchingly then lifted his hand to trace her hairline with the side of his thumb. Mary Fran closed her eyes to absorb the unexpected pleasure of that slow, simple caress.
“You know about being lonely,” he said, dropping his hand. “I know about that as well, and while I’m flattered you’re almost sure you’d consider importuning from me, I am not sure I’m willing to settle for merely that. I hear Hester very obligingly whistling up the path so as not to surprise us. Let’s join her, shall we?”
He put her hand on his arm, wrapped his fingers over hers in an odd little display of gallantry, and led her in the direction of Hester’s off-key whistling.
While Mary Fran blinked back the damnable and stupid urge to cry.
***
When a man who’d been celibate for some time declined a beautiful woman’s almost, conditional, not-quite invitation to dally, that man was entitled to consider the situation afresh, when his wits were not sent begging by the way dappled sunlight danced across auburn hair. Matthew assured himself of this as he approached his hostess.
“Lady Mary Frances, a word with you, if you don’t mind a small interruption of your breakfast?”
She glanced over at him as he slid into the chair next to hers, but didn’t quite hide the impatience behind her smile. “Of course, Mr. Daniels. Are we to racket about the garden while we chat, or perhaps take another turn in the woods?”
“If you’d prefer, but I was hoping you’d show me some of the property, assuming the stable can spare us a pair of mounts.”
The idea had come to him in the middle of the previous night, when recollection of the feel of her waltzing in his arms, the feel of her hand clasping his, and the sound of her musical burr had necessitated two occasions of self-gratification.