The Bad Luck Bride (The Brides of St. Ives #1)(48)

A small crease formed between her eyes. “You want to forget when all day I’ve been praying that I always remember.”

With that, she turned away and joined the others, leaving Henderson standing alone. “I’ll bid you good day,” he said to no one in particular, and only Harriet turned toward him, a distinct look of disappointment on her face. Harriet’s family owned a lucrative tin mine, and though her family was wealthy, she was as common as he. A thought occurred to him, a terrible one indeed, that if he were to court Harriet, he would be able to see Alice far more often.

“Good-bye, Mr. Southwell,” Harriet said in a rush, her hands twisting nervously. She always had been awkwardly shy, if he recalled. That hopeful look in her eyes made him feel like a complete cad for even thinking of using her to get close to Alice. When she’d been younger, she’d had a terrible crush on him, one he had always been careful not to encourage. “W-will you be attending the festival?”

“Festival?”

Harriet seemed to go mute, so Eliza answered for her. “John Knill. It’s this year, you know. And of course my family is holding the traditional ball.” She hesitated and looked quickly to Harriet, who stared intently at the ground. “You are invited, of course.”

“Yes, do come,” Northrup said, smiling easily.

“If you think your mother wouldn’t mind,” Henderson said, darting a quick glance at Alice to see her reaction, but she’d turned away to work on her painting.

“She would love to have you, I’m sure. Please do.”

Henderson smiled. “It would be my pleasure. Thank you. I think now I’ll leave you to your paintings,” he said, giving St. Claire’s a dubious look, which earned him some laughter.

“You must stay,” St. Claire said, apparently surprising everyone in the group. “We’ve an odd number, you see.”

If anything, Harriet’s stare at the grass below her feet became even more intense, and Alice froze briefly, mid-stroke. That told him two things: She had been listening even though she was pretending to ignore them all, and the thought of him staying affected her. That alone fed the devil inside him.

“Of course, if you’d like.” Henderson looked at St. Claire, using all his acting ability not to chuckle at the man’s ridiculous mustache. He was reed thin, dressed impeccably from his straw hat (Henderson wondered how the thing was staying on his head in this wind) to his well-shined shoes. Groomed to perfection, the result, Henderson thought, of a well-trained valet who understood his employer’s tastes. Northrup was dressed much the same, though he held his hat in his hand in concession to the wind. Henderson, on the other than, had worn an old pair of boots, a pair of trousers that needed a good pressing, and a jacket that had seen better days, the type of ensemble a man throws on when he’s going for a bracing walk along the shore alone. And he’d had the practical sense not to struggle with a hat at all. Perhaps impracticality was all that separated the classes, he mused.

St. Claire went back to his painting, and the group stood behind him, giving him friendly advice. Henderson wandered over to watch Alice. It was difficult to see her face, for she wore a wide-brimmed hat tied beneath her chin with a satin ribbon, which still allowed her hair to fly free in the breeze. Her painting was quite good and not at all feminine. Using broad strokes and thickly applied paint, she had created the sort of work that got more beautiful the farther back one stood. Once in a while, she would take a step or two back to see what she had done, and Henderson moved forward, smiling and knowing that the next time she stepped back, she would knock into him. Which she did, letting out a small sound of surprise. She did not step immediately forward, which he had expected her to do, and so he leaned forward, just slightly, and whispered, “I want to taste you.”



*



Alice stiffened and quickly stepped forward, but when he moved to stand beside her, she tried her best not to let him know she was trying to keep from smiling. She was a bit vexed with him. After her shameful, wonderful, heart-searing good-bye, here he was, flirting outrageously with her. She’d truly thought when she’d walked from his room in the wee hours of the morning—not more than ten hours ago!—that she would never see him again. It had been a grand good-bye, tragic and romantic, and all day she’d been a bit weepy thinking about how she would never again in her life experience such bliss. Here he was, though, standing next to her, looking sinfully handsome and windblown, while the man she might marry was just a few feet away. Good Lord, have mercy.

“Will you please go away?” she asked conversationally.

“Never.”

What a thrilling, awful thing for him to say. She couldn’t imagine what had gotten into him. Or her, for that matter. Even now, hours after he’d touched her so intimately, she could feel that wonderful sensation between her thighs.

“I thought you’d left St. Ives. That it would be another four years at least until I saw you again.”

“Really, Mr. Southwell, must you—” Her sentence was interrupted by a scream, the bloodcurdling type that meant something horrible had happened. Alice half expected to turn and find that one of her friends had fallen into the sea-drenched rocks below them. Instead she turned to see Harriet, her face deathly pale, pointing below her as the others ran toward her.

“My God, it’s a body,” Northrup said, looking down at the large rocks at the base of the bluff. “A man.”