It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers #2)(70)

“My pear. I dropped it, and—oh, there it is.” She broke free of him and sank to her hands and knees, reaching beneath a chair. Pulling out the brandy bottle, she sat on the floor and held it in her lap.

“Lillian, forget the damned pear.”

“How did it get in there, d’you think?” She poked her finger experimentally into the neck of the bottle. “I don’ see how something so big could fit into a hole that small.”

Marcus closed his eyes against a surge of aggravated passion, and his voice cracked as he replied. “They…they put it directly on the tree. The bud grows …inside…” He slitted his eyes open and squeezed them shut again as he saw her finger intruding deeper into the bottle. “Grows…” he forced himself to continue, “until the fruit is ripe.”

Lillian seemed rather too impressed by the information. “They do? That is the cleverest, cleverest …a pear in its own little…oh no.”

“What?” Marcus asked through clenched teeth.

“My finger’s stuck.”

Marcus’s eyes flew open. Dumbfounded, he looked down at the sight of Lillian tugging on her imprisoned finger.

“I can’t get it out,” she said.

“Just pull at it.”

“It hurts. It’s throbbing.”

“Pull harder.”

“I can’t! It’s truly stuck. I need something to make it slippery. Do you have some sort of lubricant nearby?”

“No.”

“Not anything?”

“Much as it may surprise you, we’ve never needed lubricant in the library before now.”

Lillian frowned up at him. “Before you start to criticize, Wes’cliff, I should like to point out that I am not the first person ever to get her finger stuck in a bottle. It happens to people all the time.”

“Does it? You must be referring to Americans. Because I’ve never seen an Englishman with a bottle stuck on his finger. Even a foxed one.”

“I’m not foxed, I’m only—where are you going?”

“Stay there,” Marcus muttered, striding from the room. As he went out into the hallway, he saw a house-maid approaching with a pail full of rags and cleaning supplies. The dark-haired maid froze as she saw him, intimidated by the sight of his scowling face. He tried to remember her name. “Meggie,” he said curtly. “It is Meggie, isn’t it?”

“Yes, milord,” she said meekly, dropping her gaze.

“Do you have any soap or polish in that pail?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied in confusion. “The housekeeper told me to polish the chairs in the billiards room—”

“What’s it made of?” he interrupted, wondering if it contained any caustic ingredients. Seeing her increasing bewilderment, he clarified, “The polish, Meggie.”

Her eyes turned round at the master’s untoward interest in the mundane substance. “Beeswax,” she said uncertainly. “An’ lemon juice, an’ a drop or two of oil.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, milord.”

“Good,” he said with a decisive nod. “Let me have it, if I may.”

Agog, the housemaid reached into the pail, pulled out a small pot of the waxy yellow concoction, and extended it to him. “Milord, if you wish for me to polish something—”

“That will be all, Meggie. Thank you.”

She bobbed in a little curtsy, staring after him as if he had taken leave of his senses.

Returning to the library, Marcus saw Lillian lying on her back on the carpeted floor. His first thought was that she must have drifted into oblivion, but as he approached, he saw that she was holding a long wooden cylinder in her free hand, and squinting through one end. “I found it,” she exclaimed in triumph. “The kaleidoscope. It’s verrrry interesting. But not quite what I ‘spected.”

Silently he reached out, plucked the instrument from her hand, and gave her the other end to look through.

Lillian promptly gasped in amazement. “Oh, that’s lovely …How does it work?”

“One end is fitted with strategically placed panels of silvered glass, and then…” His voice faded as she turned the thing toward him.

“My lord,” she pronounced in solemn concern, viewing him through the cylinder, “you have three …hundred…eyes.” She dissolved into a fit of giggles that shook her until she dropped the kaleidoscope.

Sinking to his knees beside her, Marcus said tersely, “Give me your hand. No, not that one. The one with the bottle on it.”

She remained lying on her back as Marcus smeared a gob of the polish onto the exposed part of her finger. He rubbed the stuff into the seam where the bottle was clamped around her skin. Warmed by the heat of his palm, the scented wax released a heady burst of lemon fragrance, and Lillian breathed in the aroma with relish. “Oh, I like that.”

“Can you pull it out now?”

“Not yet.”

Making a sheath of his fingers, he continued to smooth the oily wax over her finger and the shaft of the bottle. Lillian relaxed at the gentle motion, seeming content to lie still and watch him.

He looked down at her, finding it difficult to resist the urge to climb over her prone body and kiss her senseless. “Would you mind telling me why you were drinking pear brandy in the middle of the afternoon?”