Page 21 of Meet A Rogue At Midnight
“One of you fine girls could end his wanderer’s ways and see him leg-shackled.” She patted Jonas’s arm. “This round of drinks is on me and Mr. Bainbridge. Call it a welcome home.” And she shoved off, her angel’s wings bobbing.
Will Hastings raised his cup. “Let us drink to a good leg-shackling. It cannot happen fast enough to my sister.”
“You men get all the fun.” Miss Hastings snorted delicately and set the cup to her mouth. She barely swallowed her wine before raising her cup for a toast. “I say we drink to the ladies having fun tonight.”
Cups clinked and Miss Hastings raised her cup again. “And a toast for Miss Olivia Halsey who came down from her tower tonight. May one of Plumtree’s fine men rescue her once and for all.”
“I don’t need a man to rescue me. I like what I do in my family’s tower, thank you very much.”
“Dusting off old Roman sandals a farmer plowed up?” Will pulled a grim face. “No thank you.”
“You would say that,” his sister teased. “Because your shoes have a distinct odor.”
“Humph.” Hastings shrugged off the minor insult by downing more mulled wine.
“Making sense of what we dig up, studying them, and putting those discoveries into words appeals to me.” Livvy gulped her wine, quickly adding, “Helping my father, I mean.”
“I read your father’s last book, Miss Halsey. I found it quite fascinating.” This from Lady Rowena before she dipped into her cup.
Livvy, warmed by the compliment, met Jonas’s gaze across the table. He raised his cup in a silent toast to her skill with words.
Miss Hastings peered at her female bench-mates. “All this talk of the past does us no good, ladies. We are firmly in the present and desperately in need of fun and frivolity.”
Livvy fanned herself with her hand as if about to swoon. “I wouldn’t mind a night of flirtation with one of the fine gentlemen here.”
Lady Rowena giggled and clinked her cup with Livvy’s. “Why Miss Halsey, you are a divine creature.”
Jonas gulped his wine. Livvy never fanned herself a day in her life. Not the girl he knew. But, she was a woman now—a woman he had no claim over. Nor could he say how much she’d changed these ten years. A handful of days in Plumtree wasn’t enough to learn the woman she’d become.
“Careful, ladies. Remember who you are,” Will cautioned, giving his sister the stern eye.
“Oh, Will,” she cooed. “Be a good chaperone and fetch more mulled wine for us all.”
Jonas got up and Hastings scooted free of the bench. He sat down again as Miss Hastings planted both palms on the table. She bent forward like a conspirator, speaking to Lady Rowena and Livvy with a comical, red wine moustache at the corners of her mouth. Her gaze honed in on the tall Welsh archer.
“Mr. Fortham is mine.”
Jonas traced his cup’s handle, waiting for the dancing to start. He’d sweep Livvy into the fun. For now, he’d endure Miss Hastings’s mooning over the Welsh archer.
“There’s something very…” she sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. He flirted with me when he came to repair the gate at Hastings Hall. I was out for a ride and well…we had aninterestingconversation.”
Jonas idly tapped his cup on the table.
“Then, I took my horse into the village to be shod. Mr. Fortham is quite…quite…”
“Handsome,” Lady Rowena supplied.
“Primal.”
Livvy?Jonas’s head snapped up. All eyes were on Livvy. She rolled her shoulders, one corner of her mouth curling like a freshly-sated courtesan.
“Mr. Fortham is a man of good character. He has that to recommend him,” she said, tilting her cup, inspecting the spice dregs at the bottom. “He is strong and capable in mind and body.”
Miss Hastings’s eyes narrowed. “Pray tell, Miss Halsey, when did you learn how strong and capable he is?”
“When he came to fix the door on Halsey Tower.” Livvy sipped the last of her mulled wine. “I thought common laborers were beneath you.”
“A dalliance isn’t out of the question. But, you can’t have entertained a flirtation with him. You’re promised to another man.”
