Page 68 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
Phaedra recoiled before the anger that flared in Armande’s eyes. It was a fury strangely mixed with despair.
“Damn you! I was trying to make it as plain as possible that you dare not trust me.” He flung the papers back at her and they fluttered to her feet, like leaves tossed by the wind. “If you have any more such secrets, keep them to yourself!”
He stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him. Phaedra stared after him, hardly able to breathe. At last, she bent and began gathering up the scattered papers. She felt like a gambler who had taken an enormous risk and lost. Most disturbing of all, she wasn’t even certain how high the stakes had been.
Phaedra snapped openher parasol to shield her face from the afternoon sun beating down upon the lawn, hoping that it shielded her unhappy expression as well. She picked her way past her grandfather’s servants struggling to clear away the remains of the fete luncheon.
The table looked like a field of battle at the end of a fray, with linen cloths hanging askew, some of the crockerybroken, and forks like discarded weapon strewn through a trail of cake crumbs. But the combatants had not retired. Tearing past Phaedra’s skirts, some fifty boys whooped, their voices ranging from the childish treble to those cracking on the brink of manhood. Most of them were from hard-working families known to Sawyer, lads he and Jonathan had seen placed beneath the tutelage of good, honest masters to learn a trade.
Some of the boys crammed their cheeks full of gingerbread, while others wrestled, traded cuffs, or played at tag, as frolicsome and clumsy as puppies in a kennel. Phaedra started back as a horseshoe whizzed past her nose.
Several stout lads who were supposed to be playing at quoits were growing more unruly by the minute. The game that had resulted in the misfired shoe broke into a bout of fisticuffs. Grinning like a boy himself, Sawyer guffawed, encouraging the rough-and-ready behavior. It was left to a harassed-looking Jonathan and one of the footmen to separate the young pugilists before any came away with a bloodied nose.
“Tell Mrs. Searle to fetch more cakes for the lads,” Sawyer bellowed. “Blast it all, where is that woman?”
“More cake is the last thing they need,” Jonathan snapped. The heat appeared to be affecting even his solemn composure. He tried desperately to catch Phaedra’s eye.
“Phaedra, I must talk to you,” he said as she glided past, but she ducked deeper into the shade of her parasol.
Her mind was yet too full of the scene with Armande. She barely heeded Jonathan or the boys’ antics, not even when one bold rascal let loose a frog near her petticoats.
“You must have been mad.” She rebuked herself for the dozenth time. “Whatever possessed you to confess to Armande that you were Robin Goodfellow?”
And yet, she thought, why should she continue to fret so over the incident? It was not as if Armande were the enemy she hadonce imagined him to be. This was the man who had cradled her in his arms so many hot summer nights, vowing his love for her. And she had believed him.
If only his reaction to her secret had not been so strange. She had never seen such anger in his eyes, an anger that she sensed had been directed against himself as well as her.
Her gaze strayed to where Armande stood at the far edge of the lawn. No trace of his wrath remained as he tried to help a chubby, freckle-faced lad string a bow that was much too large for him. The boy thrust his tongue between his teeth, puffing and turning red as he tried to bend the supple wood back far enough to slip the string into the notch.
“I doubt biting your tongue off will help, monsieur,” she heard Armande say. The teasing light springing into his blue eyes played havoc with her heart. How oft had she glimpsed that same expression in the hours when they exchanged banter that so frequently concealed a growing desire.
“A little more muscle is what is wanted.” Armande’s strong, slender fingers closed over the small pudgy ones, helping the child accomplish the task. He handed the boy the arrow, and then tousled his hair. “Now don’t shoot any of your comrades, hein?” He smiled as the boy gave his promise and ran off.
Hope fluttered inside Phaedra. At this moment Armande looked very like the man who had so tenderly lifted her out of the saddle yesterday afternoon. She rustled toward him, but his smile faded the instant their eyes met. It was the Marquis de Varnais who raised his head and attempted to stride past her.
His rejection of her pierced her more keenly than any wound Ewan, with all of his studied cruelties, had ever been able to inflict.
“You needn’t take to your heels the instant I approach, monsieur,” she said. “I assure you, I don’t intend to burden you with any more of my secrets.”
“I pray you don’t have any more such to reveal,” he muttered.
He had started to move away, when he turned and came back as though drawn to her side against his will. “I am sorry if I lost my temper with you earlier.” His apology was as stiff as his manner. “You took me by surprise when?—”
Armande’s eyes darkened as he bent forward, his voice hard and bitter. “Why in blazes did you choose to confide in me now? Where you hoping for some sort of trade? Your secrets for mine?”
“And you presume to lecture me on the subject of trust!”
Phaedra arched her brows, trying to look scornful-but it was difficult with tears burning behind her eyes. “No, monsieur, I was not seeking a trade. I merely had some foolish notion that it would help if I offered you proof of my love. I fear I always have been too stupid to know when matters are past mending.”
This time it was she who tried to walk away from him, placing her parasol between them like a shield.
“Phaedra.” He breathed her name, but whatever Armande had been about to say was blotted out by the sound of another voice, whose lilting notes carried above the shouts of the boys.
“Top of the afternoon to you, Master Weylin. Master Burnell. ‘Tis that sorry I am to be late. I can see I’ve been missing a feast fine enough to take the shine out of Paddy Duggan’s wake.”
Phaedra whipped about in time to see her cousin, resplendent in a scarlet frock coat, sweeping off his three-cornered hat and favoring Sawyer with a jaunty bow. The bruises marring Gilly’s eye and jaw had faded to an unbecoming shade of yellow, but they did nothing to tone down his impudence.
She had nearly forgotten he was coming, as well as his reasons for doing so. Never had she thought the time would come when she would view the sight of those sparkling green eyes with such dismay.
