Tessa Dare - [Spindle Cove 03.5] (4 page)

“Where?” He sounded as if he was enjoying this now.

“Under my pillow,” she moaned into her hands, knowing he’d laugh. “As if I’m a girl of fourteen.”

He did laugh, but he did it good-naturedly.

“I admire all your work, but that one is my favorite. From the moment I saw it in Sally’s display case, I knew I had to have it. It just . . .” She’d come this far. No turning back now. “It seemed made for me.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Was it a little silver pendant with a quatrefoil design?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Then you had it right,” he said. “So long as we’re being honest. It was made with you in mind.”

Her heart turned over in her chest. “Oh.”

“I do all my best work with you in mind. I never questioned why you came by the forge because I was just pleased you came. I didn’t want you to stop. And that night with Finn? That’s when it started for me, too.”

They stared at each other. His dark eyes held her rapt.

“I find you terribly handsome,” she blurted out. Because it was the only thing left unsaid.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I would tell you you’re the kind of lovely that’s unfair to roses and sunsets. But I don’t think this honest conversation is working the way you hoped.”

“No. It’s not. We were meant to be laughing, but none of this seems ridiculous. In fact, it feels more serious by the moment.”

To know that her attraction hadn’t been one-sided—that she’d been right about those long, searching looks he’d given her now and then . . . The vindication buoyed her spirits, and a delicious tingle ran from her scalp to her toes. But from there, she didn’t know what happened next.

Evidently, he had some ideas.

He took the reins from her hands and secured them on the dash rail. Then he gathered her in his arms and drew her close.

Her heart stuttered. This was really going to happen.

She’d run from his kiss the first time.

The second time, she’d begged him for it.

This time, she’d learned her lesson. She did nothing but remain absolutely, perfectly still.

And it worked.

His lips touched hers, imparting that unique blend of strength and tenderness she was coming to treasure. To crave.

But all too soon, he lifted his head. “Have you been kissed before?”

“I don’t know whether to say yes or no. Which answer will make you do it again?”

“Oh, I’m going to do it again.” His thumb stroked her cheek. “Just wanted to know how slow to take things.”

“A little faster would be fine.” She’d been waiting twenty-three years, after all.

His answer was a thrilling, sensual growl. “As you like.”

He renewed the kiss with a series of rough presses of his mouth to hers. Warm friction teased her lips apart, and his tongue swept between them.

The invasion was startling. She felt as though the ground had gone to liquid beneath her, and now she was adrift on unfamiliar seas. Far outside the boundaries of her experience.

As if he sensed her uncertainty, his arms flexed tight, drawing her flush with his chest. Her head naturally tilted back. She was vulnerable beneath him now, and he took control, deepening the kiss. His tongue stroked hers. The grain of his whiskers rasped at the edges of her lips. Intriguing and so essentially male. She wanted to touch him, slide her fingertips down the edge of his jaw. But she lost her courage, afraid to make a mistake and bring an end to everything.

She wanted this to last and last.

When he did pull away, he made no effort to hide that he was affected, too. It was all there, in his eyes. The deep wellspring of mutual desire and need they’d barely tapped.

“Mr. Dawes,” she sighed. “What do we do?”

“First, you start calling me Aaron.”

She tested it. “Aaron. What do we do?”

He put space between them. “I suppose this is where I should revise the speech I started last night. Remind you that you’re a gentlewoman and I’m a craftsman, and nothing can come of this. And tell you we should just go back to trading longing glances across the green and never speak of this again. But the thing is, I don’t feel like giving that speech this morning.”

“Oh, good,” she said, relieved. “Because I’m not at all in the mood to hear it.”

“We’re both sober. It’s a fine, clear day. You’re a grown woman, and a clever one. I believe you understand the situation. And I’m going to trust that you know your own mind.”

Her heart swelled. What a lovely, lovely gift. No one else had ever done the same.

He put one hand over hers. “We have something, the two of us. I don’t think we could name it quite yet, much less decide what we’d do to keep it. But if you like, we can spend more time together and puzzle it out.”

“I would like that. Very much.”

Goodness. It was settled, then. She had a proper suitor for the first time in her life—and he was a blacksmith. If her mother learned of this, she would be taken with fits.

She added, “But we should probably be discreet. At least for now.”

Something flashed in his eyes, and she was worried she’d offended him. It wasn’t that she was ashamed, of course. Just careful.

She fingered the vial of tincture hanging around her neck. Old habits were difficult to break.

He reached to untie the reins. “I’d best be getting you back to the rooming house. I did promise your mother you wouldn’t freckle.” He gave her a wry wink. “I hear there may be a shilling in it for me.”

“Wait,” she said.

Before he could set the team in motion, she rose up on the curricle seat, turned, and forced down the collapsible cover so that sunlight splashed them both.

“There.” She removed her cloak and settled beside him, putting her arm through his. “Now we can go.”

C
HAPTER
4

“I
’ve assigned all the parts,” Charlotte said, handing copies of the play to the assembled ladies in the Queen’s Ruby. “We’ll read through it once this morning.”

“Heaven knows, there’s nothing else to do,” lamented Miss Price, looking out the window at another rainy day.

Diana looked down at her copy with U
RSULA
labeled at the top. “Really, I didn’t think this was settled. Why am I playing Ursula?”

Charlotte said, “It’s the easiest role in the play, I promise you. The rest of us will be running about screaming and pleading for our lives, and you just stand there and look pure.”

Diana lifted a brow. Pure? Would they still find her the ideal person for this role if they knew she’d been kissing Mr. Dawes in the vicar’s curricle yesterday?

No, not kissing Mr. Dawes. Kissing
Aaron
.

Aaron, Aaron, Aaron.

“
Diana.
”

She shook herself. “I’m sorry, what?”

“It’s your line.”

She scanned the first page and found her part, then read aloud in an even voice. “Oh, wreck and woe. My father hath betrothed me to the son of a heathen king. I should sooner die than be so defiled.”

“Do speak up, Diana,” her mother chided from across the room. “No one can hear you. Imagine Lord Drewe is standing just offstage, waiting for his cue.”

“And put emotion into it,” Charlotte added. She stood and flung one arm to the side, pressing the other wrist to her brow. “Oh, wreck and WOE. I should sooner DIE.”

Diana sighed. “I don’t think I possess the dramatic talent for this.”

“Of course you do.”

“Well, perhaps I just don’t feel equal to it today.”

“Are you ill?” Mama asked sharply.

Diana paused. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t hide behind this excuse any longer. But she didn’t want to be sitting here in the rooming house when she could be with Aaron.

Kissing
Aaron.
Touching
Aaron.
Embracing
Aaron and feeling surrounded by his big, strong arms.

She had no heart to play the martyred virgin right now.

“I knew it,” Mama wailed. “Oh, I knew that sun would do you an ill turn. No more rehearsal for you today. Go straight upstairs and rest. I will not have you falling ill when it’s time for our outing to Ambervale. Do you have any more of that infusion from Lady Rycliff?”

“I’m sure I don’t need an infusion, Mama. But perhaps I will go.” She turned to Miss Bertram. “Would you be so kind as to read my part for today?”

Miss Bertram’s eyebrows rose in alarm. “Oh, I . . . I don’t know.”

“I think you would make a marvelous Ursula. And you would be doing me a great favor.”

The girl took the booklet from Diana’s hand, smiling shyly. “Well, Mr. Evermoore does love my reading voice.”

“I’m sure he does.”

Diana tried to soothe her conscience as she left the room. She hadn’t lied. Mama had merely assumed, wrongly, that she felt ill. Just like she assumed, wrongly, that Diana would follow her instructions to go upstairs and rest.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she gathered her cloak and slipped out the rear door.

A
s she neared the smithy, a giddy flutter rose in her chest. No horses or wagons in the front meant she’d likely caught him alone. A sheen of perspiration rose on her brow even before she entered the steamy, spark-filled forge.

She entered to find Aaron not pounding at the anvil but hunched over a bit of fine metalwork at his worktable.

“Good morning,” she said, swaying her skirts a bit.

He looked up only briefly and gave her a curt “Good morning” before returning his concentration to his task. “Sorry you’ve caught me in a busy moment. I can’t leave this, or it will cool unfinished.”

“Of course. Should I come back another time?”

A furrow formed in his heavy brow. “No, don’t go. Unless you want to.”

“I’d like to stay.” She settled on her usual stool. “If I won’t be troubling you.”

Now he looked up, and his dark eyes caught hers. “You could never be any kind of trouble.”

Never mind the roaring forge, that look sent heat rushing through her. Oh, dear. And here she was, caught without her fan.

He returned to his labor, and she sat quiet and still. She did love watching him at his work. This was different from his display of brawn and sweat she’d admired the other day. When he worked with fine metal, all that power was pushed through a narrow funnel of concentration.

The result was passion. He had an artist’s passion for his creations. She touched the quatrefoil pendant in her pocket.

“There.”

He set the piece aside and wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. He left a black smudge of soot on his temple, and she found it strangely enticing. A mark of that passion, emblazoned on his skin. It spoke of virility in a primal way.

“What are you making?” she asked.

He showed her a silver bracelet, formed of two twining vines. “It’s a special order for a jeweler in Hastings.”

“You’ve been selling your work in Hastings?”

He nodded. “Rye and Eastbourne, too. I’m hoping to expand to Brighton soon.”

“And London after that?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps. But there’s only one of me. There’s a limit to how much I can do on my own.”

“Have you thought about taking on an apprentice?”

“It’s not working the forge that I need help with, so much as everything else. Fosbury says what I really need is a wi—”

He cut off the word, but Diana completed it in her mind.

What I really need is a wife.

It made sense. Marriage was a partnership in any social class. Among gentry, the lady’s contribution was a dowry or well-placed connections. As a craftsman, Aaron would do well to marry a woman with practical skills to help him manage his household and his business.

Skills women like Diana didn’t possess.

They traded awkward glances, and they both seemed to be thinking the same thing. What were they doing here? He wasn’t the kind of suitor her mother would accept, and she couldn’t be the wife he needed. If marriage was impossible, they were only flirting with heartbreak and scandal.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

We have something,
he’d said yesterday, and he was right. Diana wasn’t ready to give up on it yet.

He went back to his work, raking the fire and pumping the bellows that fueled the forge. “Much as I’d like to take the day off and spend it with you, I have to finish this piece. I’ve promised to deliver it tomorrow.”

“I understand. Is there any way I can help?”

“That’s kind of you to offer, but I’m not going to have you hauling wood and water.”

“Why not? I helped with such things the night Finn was hurt.”

“Aye, but that was an emergency. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied, I never would have allowed it.”

“If you’d tried to send me away, I wouldn’t have listened.” She had a tenacious streak. There had to be
something
she could do. “Have you eaten your noon meal?”

He shook his head.

“Then that’s what I’ll do. While you finish that piece, I’ll prepare a meal. Then we’ll sit down to eat and have time to talk, but I won’t feel I’ve distracted you from your work.”

He looked uncertain.

“Aaron, please. Let me do this. You did say you’d trust that I know my own mind.”

“So I did.” He blew out his breath and wiped his hands on a rag. “Very well, then.”

He turned to the hearth and scooped some red-hot embers with a tiny shovel, then handed the shovel out to her.

She moved to take it, though she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with it next.

“For the fire,” he explained.

“Yes, of course.” Of course. How could anyone cook without a fire?

“One of the fishermen brought me something fresh from the catch this morning, and there’s fresh butter and cream, as well. Potatoes and onions in the bin. Poke about the cabinets, and I’m sure you’ll find whatever else you need.”

“I could do with a kiss. Will I find one of those in the cabinets?”

“That I have right here.” He tilted his head and gave her a brief, yet exhilarating, kiss.

She clutched the scoop of glowing coals. “I’ll be just fine, you’ll see. Now back to work with you.”

She turned and headed toward the rear door of the forge. Beyond it, a narrow yard separated the smithy from his cottage.

“Diana?”

At the sound of her Christian name spoken in that intimate, low baritone, a thrill went through her. She nearly spilled the coals. “Yes?”

“If you need anything, you will ask?”

“Oh, of course I will,” she assured him. “Don’t look so worried. It’s not as though I’ve never done this before.”

D
iana had never done this before.

Any of it.

Not light a fire, not clean a fish . . . and most certainly not cook a meal. But she was going to do all this today, and she was going to do it well.

She entered the cottage kitchen. It was a sparely furnished room, but orderly and clean. There was no denying it could do with a woman’s touch—the curtains hanging in the window were recently laundered, but faded.

In a covered basin on the table lay, she assumed, the fish. Most likely sole or plaice, she imagined. A flat, muddy footprint of a fish that Diana would somehow need to behead. And gut. And scale and fillet and . . .

She swallowed hard.

That part could wait. She’d pare the vegetables first.

The fire,
she suddenly realized. Goodness. She couldn’t cook anything without a fire.

By habit, she’d never strayed too near a fireplace or stove—not only because her mother had insisted gentlewomen didn’t dirty their hands with such tasks but also because Diana had feared that inhaling smoke or ash could trigger a breathing crisis.

Those worries were in the past now. She faced a different challenge today.

She cautiously carried the scoop of glowing coals to the kitchen hearth. A nearby box held some straws and dried moss. Crouching on the hearthstones, she heaped the tinder in the grate, then lifted the scoop and gently sifted a few embers atop it.

A fizzling curl of smoke rose up.

And promptly died, taking all her excitement with it.

What was she doing wrong? She thought of Aaron stoking the fire in the smithy, raking and turning the coals . . . pumping the bellows.

The bellows. That was it. A fire needed air.

She scattered another few embers over the tinder, then lowered herself almost to her belly, pursed her lips, and blew. A flurry of sparks resulted. Encouraged, she inhaled slowly, then exhaled again, careful not to overtax her lungs. This time, the little sparks swelled and caught the tinder, resulting in a few lapping tongues of flame.

Diana rose to her knees and cheered—quietly—while brushing the dust from her hands and skirts. A small triumph, perhaps, but a promising start.

Her sense of triumph quickly dampened, however, when the tinder began to flame out and she realized she had no split logs to keep the fire going. She looked around. Nothing, to either side of the hearth. Then she recalled the well-stocked woodpile outside the smithy, under the overhang.

After another slow, loving exhalation to nourish her small flames, she rose and dashed outside, gathering an armful of splits from the pile before hurrying back, all the while praying the fire wouldn’t die in her absence.

She knelt before the hearth—no more care for her skirts this time—and placed the thinnest of the logs atop the burning tinder.

The flames were immediately smothered, dying in a thin plume of white, elegiac smoke.

“No,” she cried. “No, no, no.”

She flattened herself to the hearthstones and huffed desperately, trying to rekindle the flame.

She couldn’t go back to Aaron and ask for more coals. He would know she’d failed before she’d even begun, and that she couldn’t perform the most basic of household tasks. What use could she ever be to him? It wasn’t as though they’d talked about marriage, but she wasn’t ready to foreclose the possibility.

“Please,” she begged. “Please, please. Don’t go out.”

And as if some pagan god of fire heard her petition, a small flame caught a notch on the underside of the wood. The fire began to gnaw at it, dripping morsels of ash.

Hosanna.

She fed the fire carefully, not daring to stray a pace from the hearth until she had a tall, respectable blaze.

When she felt it safe to rise, she gave the basin on the table a wary glance. She wasn’t ready for that fish just yet.

Instead, she found a knife and set about paring vegetables and adding them to a kettle of salted water. She managed three potatoes, two carrots, and an onion with only one slice to her finger. She bound her wound with a strip of linen torn from her handkerchief. The onion made a useful scapegoat for her silly tears.

After hanging the kettle on a hook and swiveling it over the fire to boil, she could no longer postpone the inevitable.

Time to gut the fish.

She went to the table and lifted the cover from the basin.

“Ah!” With a muted shriek, she dropped the cover. It felt back with a bang.

Oh Lord, oh Lord.

Several moments passed before she could bear to lift the cover again and peer inside. She hoped to see something different this time. But no.

There it was.

It wasn’t a fish.

It was an eel.

And it was still
alive
. Just angrily alive and now agitated, weaving slick, dark-green figure eights in its basin of murky water.

With a shudder, Diana covered it again. Then she drew out a chair and decided to sit and think for a while, about just how much she truly wanted this.

She closed her eyes and thought of Aaron’s kiss. The strength of his arms around her. The heat of his body, and the tender mastery of his tongue coaxing hers. She remembered their driving lesson. The joy of racing down a country lane, as fast as the spring mud would allow, with the top of the curricle down.