Page 36 of The Society Catch
‘Yes,’ Joanna admitted. ‘Oh look, you like butter – the buttercups are reflecting gold on your face.’ She smiled as he brushed the flowers away then added, ‘But I wish you would tell me about your head. How did you hurt it?’
‘Ow! Stop touching it,’ Giles protested, pushing her hand away. ‘I hope you are proud of the damage you did when you pitched me into that loose box.’
‘Idid that? But how?’
‘You tripped me up with a trick I would have expected from any sneak thief, but not a young lady – more fool me – and then I fell over a pitchfork, landed on a bale, rolled off it and hit my head on a crate. A most effective attack.’ He studied her face and added, ‘You make me feel middle-aged, Joanna Fulgrave.’
‘Oh no, that is preposterous. How could I make you feel middle-aged?’ she protested, laughing at him.
‘You and Suzy between you,’ Giles sighed, getting to his feet with the careless ease of a youth of sixteen and reaching out hand. ‘You make me feel stolid and sensible.’
Joanna was very certain that whatever Lady Suzanne made Giles feel, it was not the onset of middle age. The feeling that had swept through her, and which she could only compare to the sensation of having had one glass of champagne too many, left her abruptly. She scrambled to her feet without taking his hand and stalked off towards Moonstone who was making friends with the black hunter.
‘If we are to travel in easy stages because of your age, wehad better get going again,’ she threw over her shoulder, then dodged laughing behind Moonstone’s dappled hindquarters as Giles made a mock-threatening grab for her.
‘How long will it take us?’ she asked once they were mounted.
‘Two days, three possibly.’ He squinted up at the sun, appeared to do a rapid mental calculation and turned left out of the gate. ‘You really were going to go to your aunt this morning? You do not have some other bolt hole you haven’t told me about?’
‘No,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I knew that if she would not take me in I had run out of options, other than to go to my sister Grace. But she would have only sent me home and in any case, I have no idea how to get there. Not like when I ran away from the Geddings’. Then I had worked out my strategy and made notes from atlases. Donotlaugh at me.’
Giles was failing to suppress a grin, but he apologised solemnly in the face of her indignation. ‘And where did you learn all about strategy, might I ask?’
‘I read about it because of William,’ she said. ‘When he was army-mad, you remember. He kept wanting to talk about famous battles and marches and so I read some books so I could talk more sensibly to him.’ It was partly the truth, although the person she wanted to have the conversations was not her young brother. ‘And I remembered about having an objective and then working out one’s strategy for achieving it, and what tactics one needed to employ.’
‘I am impressed. Most people get in a muddle over the difference between strategy and tactics. Shall we canter? I think we cannot be far from March.’
The long, fine July day passed for Joanna in something like happiness. She was with Giles, riding in easy companionship, and although they spoke little it seemed as though they had noneed to and understood each other without words. He would glance at her and she would nod and urge Moonstone into a canter, then just as she was feeling a little tired, he would rein in and they would walk along the quiet lanes, heavily fringed with white clouds of cow parsley, occasionally pointing out to each other a view, a picturesque ruined church or a deer grazing at the edge of a coppice.
They found an inn on the outskirts of Chatteris where the landlady served them thick slices of ham and wickedly vinegary pickled onions with slabs of crusty bread and fresh churned butter. When they had finished Giles pushed aside his tankard and pulled out his notes, gleaned from Lord Brandon’s head groom.
‘Can you face another twenty miles?’ he asked. ‘If you cannot we will stop for the night at Huntingdon, but if we can make it to St Neots we will be that much further on our way tomorrow.’
Joanna was beginning to feel both tired and stiff, but she nodded firmly. ‘Of course, that sounds far the best thing to do.’
To her surprise Giles reached out a hand and caught the point of her chin in his fingers. ‘Brave Joanna,’ he said softly. ‘I know you are tired, I know you cannot help being apprehensive about how all this is going to turn out, and I do believe you when you tell me your heart is broken – even if you don’t think I take it seriously. Any other young woman of my acquaintance would be treating me to tears, sulks or tantrums by now.’ The strong fingers gently caressed the soft skin of her throat and Joanna swallowed hard at the feeling it evoked.
‘Even Lady Suzanne?’ she queried tartly in an effort to suppress the desire to turn her cheek into the palm of his hand, to beg for caresses.
‘Suzy?’ Giles snorted with laughter at the very idea. ‘Suzy would have decided to run away with her maid, her lapdog, atleast two portmanteaux of garments and a courier to secure her the most comfortable accommodation at every stop. Under these conditions she would have burst decoratively into tears fifteen miles ago, called me the greatest beast in nature and insisted on a detour into Huntingdon for some shopping to soothe her fractured nerves. The temptation to elope with Suzy, just to watch the havoc she would wreck along the way, is almost irresistible.’
‘But doubtless the thought of your father’s disapproval prevents you?’ Joanna said sweetly. Something in her tone warned him that she did not much like Suzanne.
‘It would certainly greatly distress him,’ Giles agreed. The General would have another seizure, just at the thought of such a scandalous occurrence, he reflected with grim humour, although of all the things that he might do to incur his father’s wrath, eloping with Lady Suzanne was about the least likely.
As they walked back to the horses Giles reflected on just why it had never so much as crossed his mind to offer for Suzy until his father had demanded it and why, when the idea was raised, he was so very certain she was entirely wrong for him.
He loved her, faults and all. He admired her beauty and charm and wilful spirit. She made him laugh, she took his breath away when she was attired for a grand ball, he forgave her whatever pranks she played. And yet he could never recall her arousing the slightest desire in his breast, not the faintest stirring of longing to possess her, either in passion or as his wife. He really must love her like the sister he had never had, he realised.
Whereas the young woman beside him was stirring emotions in him that were far from brotherly. She was less pretty than Suzy, she employed none of her ladyship’s tricks of flirtation, none of her winsome, charming ploys to attract and amuse. But she had courage far beyond what that shallow, adorable littlemadam possessed. Courage, and an innocent, passionate nature which was making it harder and harder for him to feel towards her as he should.
Giles came to himself with a start to find Joanna waiting patiently for him to give her a leg-up into the saddle. He lifted her swiftly, anxious not to linger, aware of a new scent, something of her friend Lady Brandon’s perhaps. He mounted and tried to make himself forget the long moments when he had lain across her body in the meadow. The feeling of her trembling, warm form against him, the new scent in her hair as it clouded around his nose and mouth…
And then the even more arousing sensation of her stretched out beneath him, supple and yielding and innocently reacting to the demands of a male body pressing down on hers for the first time. It had taken all his self-control not to lower his mouth to hers, to kiss her until she was dizzy with passion and…
‘Giles?’
‘Mmm? Sorry, I was thinking.’Thinking?Damn it, he was working himself up into a thoroughly uncomfortable state and he must stop it immediately. Unfortunately Joanna’s next, hesitant, question did nothing to turn his mind from the heated image of what she would look like naked.
