The Sins of Lord Lockwood (Rules for the Reckless #6)(14)
He was at risk of falling behind.
His recent routine was to blame for it. Gone were the mornings of disciplined exertion. For the past few months, he’d been on a tour of sorts—a survey of likely heiresses up and down the British Isles. He was a bachelor with a title: everywhere he went, he was welcomed and feted and flirted with. But this campaign entailed a great many late nights, and bottles of wine and rich food. Now, in his laboring lungs, he found evidence of his own dissipation.
Lady Forth, meanwhile, was rumored to be on a campaign of her own—Professor Arbuthnot had said as much when handing over the manuscript. Don’t get any ideas, lad. She’ll be looking for a husband of substance, not a book burner. But since Scottish flirtations evidently entailed scaling mountains, Lady Forth’s desirability had turned her into an athlete.
Liam wanted to tell her now that the professor’s spectacles were as thick as windowpanes: on that fateful night in the Bodleian, he’d mistaken Liam’s attempt to beat out the flames for an effort to fan them. But it seemed rather late to launch his self-defense. Getting tossed out of Trinity had led to some grand times abroad, and so Liam had never minded the rumors, nor imagined a time when they might irk him.
For that matter, he’d never foreseen himself laboring to keep up with a woman, much less struggling to impress her. Why, as recently as last night, he’d gone to sleep quite content. Countess Forth was attractive, clever, and prickly enough to make it interesting. Wealthy enough, too, to solve his problems, which was the reason he’d bothered in the first place. He’d envisioned this walk as a chance to evaluate her—not to be evaluated. For what rich young heiress, denied a season in London and kept sequestered in the north, would look on a gentleman such as himself, and not think of the fun they could have?
The answer: Anna Winterslow Wallace, who, despite his best and most charming discourse over the last hour of walking, seemed thoroughly unimpressed by tales of London, Rome, Geneva, Madrid—and not at all out of breath, either, though the slope continued to steepen.
He was shamefully grateful when she drew up by a waterfall, a sparkling ribbon that danced down the granite flank of the mountain. “You’ve certainly traveled a great deal,” she said. Usually these words came lofting on a warm current of admiration, but her tone was arid.
Of course, there had been other pretty young women at the Camerons’ last night—all of them seeming excited to make his acquaintance. Perhaps one of them had money. He looked up the path, but their companions had taken a half hour’s head start. “We had been waiting for an hour already,” Countess Forth had told him when he’d arrived, “and they went ahead, fearing it would rain.”
He’d overslept. It was one of his vices.
Lady Forth crept near to the falls to refill her canteen. The other women—he had caught sight of them above, as the trail twisted sharply—were dressed in sensible but respectable woolen gowns. The countess, in all her scientific glory, was wearing split skirts, the hems of which she had tucked into tall boots. Nor, he suspected, was she wearing a corset. She looked like a Zouave soldier; all she lacked was the mustache and medals.
Troubling, then, that he found himself staring at her backside. She had a narrow waist, and magnificently broad Scottish hips. He was perverse. The experience of failing to charm a woman was somehow seducing him.
“Should we try to catch up with the others?” he asked when she sat down on a mossy rock and began to drink. “They may be waiting for us.”
It was only water that she was drinking—water no doubt flavored by deer droppings. But she swallowed it with such obvious relish that he felt a stirring in his groin, and that, paired with the hoarseness in his breath, was too much for his vanity.
She was as tall as a man, and wearing trousers. No matter that she had two hundred thousand pounds to her name, or that her hair looked brighter than the fire in the Bodleian that night. He had standards to keep.
She glanced up, her green eyes cool. “No,” she said, “they won’t be waiting. After all, it was I who invited you on this walk. It is not their responsibility to see to your comfort.” Her gaze dropped significantly to his boots. “Are your feet all right?”
“Brilliant,” he said. These boots were the height of fashion. They had started pinching a mile ago. He would have sliced off his toes before admitting it.
“I see.” She paused. “I had thought you were limping. My mistake!”
He bit back a rueful smile. She had standards as well—and he clearly did not meet them.
She rose and set out without a backward glance. He was reminded, as he trailed her, of equally miserable adventures as a child—crammed between his mother and cousin in some carriage, his head aching from the rattle of the windows and jostling of springs, while Stephen delivered some ingratiating monologue on the historical sights ahead, to Liam’s parents’ encouragement—Tell us more, Stephen; how clever you are—while all the while Liam tried not to vomit, praying the journey would end before he disgraced himself.
The memories faded as he caught up with Lady Forth, leaving melancholy in their wake.
He missed his parents.
They had never taken him to Scotland. It had not been in fashion in his youth. But his mother would have adored these surroundings—the path bedecked by green ferns and shoots of heather, and below, in the shadow cast by the mountain, foothills studded by alder and birch trees whose bright leaves rippled in the wind.