Beauty and the Blacksmith(15)

He slid his hand higher, over her garter and up. His touch was a brand against her bare, shivering thigh.

She clutched his neck, urging him further. “Yes.”

Until Charlotte moaned and stirred in the wagon bed, and they jolted apart.

Her whole body mourned the loss. Her nipples, tight and achy, strained toward him.

“I’d forgotten her.” She clapped a hand to her brow.

Aaron chuckled between ragged breaths. “I can’t believe she slept through everything.”

“She’s always been that way. Slept like a stone, ever since she was a baby. I’ll be hard-pressed to make her believe any of this tomorrow.”

“Then don’t try. I think you’d do better to keep it between us.”

“But Aaron . . .”

She didn’t want to tell Charlotte about the swindler or the fight, but they wouldn’t be able to hide their relationship much longer.

“Wait until Thursday,” he said. “I want to talk with Lord Payne before we make any plans. I’ve had my differences with the man, and I didn’t care for the way he behaved when he eloped with your sister . . . but I’m determined to do better myself. He’s your brother-in-law and the man of the family. I don’t need his permission, but I want to speak with him about this—about us—and hear what he has to say. All right?”

She nodded. “All right.”

He pressed his brow to hers and caressed her lips with a tender kiss. “There’s my girl.”

As they kissed, her muzzy thoughts swarmed in two opposite directions, one sublime and one utterly mundane.

The sublime: She was his girl. His girl. His girl.

The mundane: Now she really had to practice that ridiculous play.





CHAPTER 9


“Ursula was simply too missish to live.” The next day, in the parlor of the Queen’s Ruby, Charlotte flipped through the booklet and made a face. “It’s a miracle no one beheaded her earlier.”

“According to the vicar,” Diana replied, “even the Church now believes her story is a myth. But I still think we should show some respect.”

“Show respect for my nerves,” Mama interjected. “Charlotte, pass me the vinaigrette.”

“I can’t, Mama. It’s missing.” Charlotte arched a brow at Diana, then slid a glance toward Miss Bertram. “I told you there’s a pattern,” she whispered.

“Missing? Nonsense. It must be here somewhere.” Mama rose and began to poke about the room.

“The play,” Diana said. “You’re supposed to be helping me learn my lines.”

Now that Aaron would be in attendance, she actually wanted to do well. Of course, Mama had completely misinterpreted her intentions.

“I’m so glad you’re finally making an effort, Diana. Lord Drewe cannot fail to be impressed.”

Diana bit back an objection. These few remaining days before Thursday would be her mother’s final days to believe she had an obedient, well-intentioned daughter with excellent prospects. She wasn’t looking forward to the aftermath, when Mama learned the truth.

Diana opened her booklet to the first page. “Oh, wreck and WOE. My father hath betrothed me to the son of a pagan king. I would sooner DIE than be so defiled.”

Charlotte didn’t read her part. “I’m finding it hard to sympathize with my role as Cordula,” she complained. “If I were friends with this Ursula, I would have shaken some sense into her. I mean, really. So her parents betrothed her to a pagan prince, and she doesn’t want to marry him. But instead of just saying she doesn’t wish to marry him, she asks for a delay and sets sail with eleven thousand of her closest virgin friends, floating about on the ocean for three years.”

Diana shrugged. “It sounds rather like a seafaring version of Spindle Cove. Perhaps they amused themselves with theatricals.”

“They didn’t study celestial navigation, I know that much. Because after three years of drifting, she lands a scant hundred miles away on the shores of France.”

Miss Bertram spoke up. “Mr. Evermoore and I have dreamed of taking the Grand Tour. Now that the war’s over.”

“Oh, of course you have.” Charlotte rolled her eyes.

“Go on with Saint Ursula,” Diana prompted, anxious for Miss Bertram’s feelings.

“This is the best part. Where her army of virgins . . .” Charlotte giggled. “I mean, really. Can you imagine eleven thousand virgins, swarming en masse over the fields of Gaul? They must have been like a plague of locusts, stripping the fields bare and sucking the rivers dry as they went.”

“I suppose that’s why it’s a myth.”

“Right. So the Mythical Virgin Swarm makes it as far as Cologne before running straight into a wall of marauding Huns. Naturally, Ursula refuses to see them as husband material. But does she put up any fight? No. Just . . .”

Charlotte drew her finger across her neck and made a grisly slicing sound. “Too missish to live. If she did truly live at all—which history, the Church, and common sense seem to suggest she didn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from her,” Diana said.

Exhausted by her fruitless search for the vinaigrette, Mama sank into the nearest chair and snapped open her fan. “You’re right, Diana. The moral of the play is clear. Ursula should have married as her parents wished. I’m sure they had good reasons for choosing Meriadoc. He was a prince, and probably quite wealthy.”

“No, no. ” Charlotte strangled the air in a gesture of frustration. “That’s not the moral at all. What Ursula ought to have done was stand up for herself. If she’d had one good foot-stamping row with her parents and said, ‘I’m not going to marry your filthy heathen prince, so there,’ she would have saved herself—and her eleven thousand friends—a great deal of trouble.”

She fixed Diana with a pointed gaze.

Diana wasn’t sure what her sister was getting at. But it made her uncomfortable. Had Charlotte somehow guessed at her relationship with Aaron?

“You are right, Miss Charlotte.” Miss Bertram shot to her feet. “I’m going to write to my parents this instant and tell them I cannot be parted from Mr. Evermoore. No matter how they disapprove.”

As Miss Bertram stormed from the room, Charlotte grumbled, “At least someone is convinced.”

“Can we just rehearse?” Diana asked.

“Yes, indeed!” Mama said. “Diana must learn her lines by heart. You can be assured that Lord Drewe will know his. How many scenes do you have with him, Diana? Is there a kiss?”

Diana threw down the booklet in exasperation. “Ursula dies a virgin, Mother. It’s the whole point of the play. There is no marriage. No kiss.”

What would Mama say if she knew Diana had kissed Aaron three times now?

Charlotte was right. Diana wanted to respect Aaron’s wishes about speaking with her brother-in-law first, but that didn’t mean she had to keep up this farce regarding Lord Drewe.

“Mama, I am not going to marry Lord Drewe. He hasn’t asked. He isn’t likely to ask. And even if he did ask, I would refuse him.”

Charlotte pumped her fists in a silent cheer.

Her mother pressed a hand to her heart. She blinked rapidly. Diana began to wonder if she should have saved this speech until after they’d located the missing vinaigrette.

When at last Mama spoke, it was quietly. “I am so proud of you, Diana.”

“You . . . you are?”

“Yes. I am proud of you, my dear. And I have felt the same in my own heart, but been reluctant to say it. As long as you’ve waited to marry, there should be no compromise.”

Diana was stunned speechless. If she’d known it would be this easy, she would have initiated this discussion years ago.

“You are right,” Mama went on. “You cannot marry the Marquess of Drewe. We must hold out for a duke.”

Oh, Lord.

Across from her, Charlotte made the throat-slicing slash and collapsed on the divan.

Since the sky’s war on Spindle Cove seemed to be in a temporary cease-fire, Aaron found himself inordinately busy at the forge. Farmers were making use of the break in the rain to shoe their horses and get their hoes, harrows, and plowshares in working order.

Of course, this flurry of business would happen on precisely the few days Aaron wished to have the smithy to himself. He was finding it difficult to steal daylight to work on Diana’s ring. Instead, he worked at the mold by night, lighting unprecedented numbers of candles at his kitchen table.

At last he was finished, and he managed to scrape up an hour to cast the thing. He heated the gold in a crucible and poured it into the mold. When it cooled, he held it up for inspection.

Not bad. But not good enough. He’d tweak the mold and melt it down again.