It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers #2)(14)

Before her disbelieving eyes, she saw Westcliff standing at the last post, Castle Rock, with his hands held up in readiness to catch the ball. How could he? After showing her how to hit the ball, he was now going to tag her out?

“Get out of my way!” Lillian shouted, running pellmell toward the post, determined to reach it before he caught the ball. “I’m not going to stop!”

“Oh, I’ll stop you,” Westcliff assured her with a grin, standing right in front of the post. He called to the pitcher. “Throw it home, Arthur!”

She would go through him, if necessary. Letting out a warlike cry, Lillian slammed full-length into him, causing him to stagger backward just as his fingers closed over the ball. Though he could have fought for balance, he chose not to, collapsing backward onto the soft earth with Lillian tumbling on top of him, burying him in a heap of skirts and wayward limbs. A cloud of fine beige dust enveloped them upon their descent. Lillian lifted herself on his chest and glared down at him. At first she thought that he had been winded, but it immediately became apparent that he was choking with laughter.

“You cheated!” she accused, which only seemed to make him laugh harder. She struggled for breath, drawing in huge lungfuls of air. “You’re not supposed …to stand in front…of the post …you dirty cheater!”

Gasping and snorting, Westcliff handed her the ball with the ginger reverence of someone yielding a priceless artifact to a museum curator. Lillian took the ball and hurled it aside. “I was not out,” she told him, jabbing her finger into his hard chest for emphasis. It felt as if she were poking a hearthstone. “I was safe, do you…hear me?”

She heard Arthur’s amused voice as he approached them. “Actually, miss—”

“Never argue with a lady, Arthur,” the earl interrupted, having managed to regain his powers of speech, and the boy grinned at him.

“Yes, milord.”

“Are there ladies here?” Daisy asked cheerfully, coming from the field. “I don’t see any.”

Still smiling, the earl looked up at Lillian. His hair was mussed, and his teeth were very white in his swarthy, dust-streaked face. With his autocratic facade stripped away, and his eyes sparkling with enjoyment, his grin was so unexpectedly engaging that Lillian experienced a curious melting sensation inside. Hanging over him, she felt her own lips curving in a reluctant smile. A loose lock of her hair dangled free of its tether, sliding silkily over his jaw.

“What’s a trebuchet?” she asked.

“A catapult. I have a friend who has a keen interest in medieval weaponry. He…” Westcliff hesitated, a new tension seeming to spread through his taut body as he lay beneath her. “He recently built a trebuchet using an ancient design…and enlisted me to help fire it…”

Lillian was entertained by the idea that the normally reserved Westcliff was capable of such boyish antics. Realizing that she was straddling him, she colored and began to wriggle off him. “Your aim was off?” she asked, striving to sound casual.

“The owner of the stone wall we demolished seemed to think so.” The earl caught his breath sharply as her body slid away from his, and remained sitting on the ground even after she had gotten to her feet.

Wondering why he was staring at her so oddly, Lillian began to whack her dusty skirts with her hands, but it was impossible. Her clothes were a filthy mess. “Oh God,” she murmured to Daisy, who was also rumpled and dirty, but not nearly to this extent. “How are we going to explain the state of our walking dresses?”

“I’ll ask one of the maids to sneak them down to the laundry before Mother notices. Which reminds me—it’s nearly time for us to awaken from our nap!”

“We’ll have to hurry,” Lillian said, glancing back at Lord Westcliff, who had put his coat back on and was now standing behind her. “My lord, if anyone asks you whether you’ve seen us…you will say that you haven’t?”

“I never lie,” he said, and she made an exasperated sound.

“Could you at least refrain from volunteering any information?” she asked.

“I suppose I could.”

“How helpful you are,” Lillian said in a tone that conveyed the opposite. “Thank you, my lord. And now if you will excuse us, we must run. Literally.”

“Follow me, and I’ll show you a shortcut,” Westcliff offered. “I know a way through the garden and into the servants’ entrance beside the kitchen.”

Glancing at each other, the sisters nodded in unison and hurried after him, waving distracted good-byes to Arthur and his friends.

As Marcus guided the Bowman sisters through the late-summer garden, he was annoyed by the way Lillian kept sidling ahead of him. She seemed physically incapable of following his lead. Marcus glanced at her covertly, taking note of the way her legs moved beneath the light muslin walking dress. Her stride was long and loose-limbed, unlike the practiced feminine sway that most women affected.

Silently Marcus reflected on his inexplicable reaction to her during the rounders game. As he had watched her, the vivid enjoyment in her expression had been completely irresistible. She had a coltish energy and an enthusiasm for physical activity that seemed to rival his own. It was not at all fashionable for young women in her position to exhibit such robust health and spirits. They were supposed to be shy and modest and restrained. But Lillian had been too compelling for him to ignore, and before he had quite known what was happening, he had joined the game.