Scandal in Spring (Wallflowers #4)(18)

Daisy kept her voice soft and her movements slow as she crept toward the bramble. The bird froze and peered at her with one bright black eye.

“There’s a nice fellow,” Daisy soothed, carefully reaching for the line. “My goodness, you’re large. If you’ll just be patient a moment longer, I’ll—ouch!” Suddenly the goose had rushed forward and struck her forearm with a hammer-blow of its beak.

Scampering back, Daisy glanced down at the little dent on her skin, which was beginning to bruise. She scowled at the belligerent goose. “You ungrateful creature! Just for that I ought to leave you here like this.”

Rubbing the sore spot on her arm, Daisy wondered if she might be able to use her fishing rod to unhook the line from the bramble…but that still didn’t solve the problem of removing the spoon from the goose’s leg. She would have to walk back to the manor and find someone to help.

As she bent to pick up her fishing gear, she heard an unexpected noise. Someone whistling an oddly familiar tune. Daisy listened intently, remembering the melody. It was a song that had been popular in New York just before she had left, called “The End Of A Perfect Day.”

Someone was walking toward her from the direction of the river. A man dressed in sodden clothes, carrying a fishing creel and wearing an ancient low-brimmed hat. He was wearing a sportsman’s tweed coat and rough trousers, and it was impossible not to notice the way the layers of his clothing clung wetly to the lean contours of his body. Her senses leaped with recognition, galvanizing her pulse to a new pace.

The man stopped in mid-whistle as he saw her. His eyes were bluer than the water or the sky, startling in his tanned face. As he removed his hat in deference, the sun brought out rich mahogany glints in the heavy dark locks of his hair.

“Blast,” Daisy said to herself. Not just because he was the last person she wanted to see at the moment, but also because she had to admit that Matthew Swift was extraordinarily good-looking. She didn’t want to find him so physically appealing. Nor did she want to feel such curiosity about him, the desire to steal inside his privacy and discover his secrets and pleasures and fears. Why had she never taken an interest in him before? Perhaps she had been too immature. Perhaps it wasn’t he who had changed, but she.

Swift approached her cautiously. “Miss Bowman.”

“Good morning, Mr. Swift. Why aren’t you fishing with the others?”

“My creel is full. And I was outfishing them to the extent that it was going to embarrass them all if I continued.”

“How modest you are,” Daisy said wryly. “Where’s your rod?”

“Westcliff took it.”

“Why?”

Setting down his creel, Swift replaced his hat. “I brought it with me from America. It’s a jointed hickory rod with a flexible ash tip and a Kentucky multiplying reel with a balanced crank handle.”

“Multiplying reels don’t work,” Daisy said.

“British multipliers don’t,” Swift corrected. “But in the states we’ve made a few improvements. As soon as Westcliff realized I was able to cast directly from the spool, he practically ripped the thing from my hands. He’s fishing with it as we speak.”

Knowing her brother-in-law’s love of technological devices, Daisy smiled ruefully. She felt Swift’s gaze on her, and she didn’t want to look back at him, but she found herself staring anyway.

It was jarring to reconcile her memories of the odious young man she had known with this robust specimen of manhood. He was like a new-minted copper penny, bright and shiny and perfect. The morning light slid over his skin and caught in the glittering length of his lashes and the tiny fans of lines radiating from the outward corners of his eyes. She wanted to touch his face, to make him smile and feel the curve of his lips beneath her fingers.

The silence lengthened, becoming strained and awkward until it was broken by the goose’s imperious honk.

Swift glanced at the massive bird. “You have a companion, I see.” When Daisy explained what the two boys had been doing with the goose, Swift grinned. “Clever lads.”

The remark did not strike Daisy as being especially compassionate. “I want to help him,” she said. “But when I tried to get near, he pecked me. I expected a domestic breed would have been a bit more receptive to my approach.”

“Greylags are not known for their mild temperaments,” Swift informed her. “Particularly males. He was probably trying to show you who was boss.”

“He proved his point,” Daisy said, rubbing her arm.

Swift frowned as he saw the growing bruise on her arm. “Is that where he pecked you? Let me see.”

“No, it’s all right—” she began, but he had already come forward. His long fingers encircled her wrist, the thumb of his other hand passing gently near the dark purple mark.

“You bruise easily,” he murmured, his dark head bent over her arm.

Daisy’s heart dispensed a series of hard thumps before settling into a fast rhythm. He smelled like the outdoors—sun, water, grassy-sweet. And deeper in the fragrance lingered the tantalizing incense of warm, sweaty male. She fought the instinct to move into his arms, against his body…to pull his hand to her breast. The mute craving shocked her.

Glancing up at his downturned face, Daisy found his blue eyes staring right into hers. “I…” Nervously she pulled away from him. “What are we to do?”