To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)(11)

Now Emeline couldn’t decline him without looking churlish, and the dratted man knew it. The corner of his mouth curled as he watched her with warm brown eyes.

She pursed her lips. “Thank you, Mr. Hartley. You’re very kind.”

He inclined his head, straightened away from the lamppost, and held out his arm to her. “Shall we?”

Why did the man only remember the proprieties when it suited him? Emeline smiled stiffly and placed her fingertips on his sleeve, conscious of the muscle beneath the fabric. He glanced at her hand and up at her, cocking an eyebrow. She tilted her chin and began walking, Tante Cristelle and the girl following behind. Her aunt seemed to be lecturing Rebecca on the importance of shoes.

Around them, the fashionable Mayfair throng ebbed and flowed. Young bucks loitered in doorways, gossiping and eyeing the grandly dressed ladies. A dandy strolled past in a pink-powdered wig, his long walking stick extravagantly employed. Emeline heard a snort from Tante Cristelle. She inclined her head to the Misses Stevens as they passed. The elder girl nodded most properly. The younger, a pretty if vacuous redhead in overwide panniers, giggled into her gloved hand.

Emeline lowered her brows in disapproval at the girl. “How do you find our capital, Mr. Hartley?”

“Crowded.” He dipped his head close to hers as he spoke. She caught a pleasing scent on his breath but couldn’t place it.

“You are used to a smaller city?” She lifted her skirt as they approached a puddle of something noxious. Mr. Hartley drew her closer to him when they skirted it, and for a moment she felt the warmth of his body through wool and linen.

“Boston is smaller than London,” he replied. They separated and she was chagrined to realize that she missed his warmth. “But it is just as crowded. I’m not used to cities at all.”

“You were raised in the countryside?”

“More like the wilderness.”

She turned in surprise at his answer just as he must’ve leaned toward her again. Suddenly his face was only inches from hers. Fine lines surrounded his coffee-colored eyes, deepening as he smiled at her. She noticed that a thin, pale scar lay under his left eye.

Then she looked away. “Were you raised by wolves, then, Mr. Hartley?”

“Not quite.” His voice was amused, despite the sharpness of her words. “My father was a trapper on the Pennsylvania frontier. We lived in a cabin he’d built from logs that still had the bark on them.”

This sounded very primitive. Actually, she had trouble imagining his home, it was so foreign to what she knew. “How were you educated until you went to the boys school?”

“My mother taught me reading and writing,” Mr. Hartley said. “I learned about tracking, hunting, and the woods from my father. He was a very good woodsman.”

They passed a bookshop with a bright red sign hanging so low that it nearly brushed Mr. Hartley’s tricorne. Emeline cleared her throat. “I see.”

“Do you?” he asked softly. “My world back then is a far cry from this.” He nodded at the noisy London street. “Can you imagine a forest so quiet you can hear the leaves fall? Trees so big a grown man cannot wrap his arms about their girth?”

She shook her head. “It’s difficult to picture. Your woodlands sound very strange to me. But you left those woods, didn’t you?”

He was watching the flow of the crowd about them as they walked, but now he glanced down at her.

She drew in a breath, staring into his dark eyes. “That must have been quite a change, leaving the freedom of the forest for a school.”

One corner of his mouth tilted up, and he looked away. “It was, but boys are adaptable. I learned how to follow the rules and which boys to stay away from. And I was big, even then. That helped.”

Emeline shuddered. “They seem so savage, boarding schools.”

“Boys are savage little beasts, by and large.”

“What of the teachers?”

He shrugged. “Most are competent. Some are unhappy men who dislike boys. But there are others who truly love their profession and care for the children.”

Emeline knit her brows. “What a very different childhood you and your sister must have had. You said she grew up in the city of Boston?”

“Yes.” For the first time, his voice sounded troubled. “Sometimes I think our childhoods were too different.”

“Oh?” She watched his face. His expressions were so subtle, so fleeting, that she felt like a diviner when she caught them.

He nodded, his eyes hooded. “I worry that I don’t give her all that she needs.”

She stared ahead as she tried to think of a reply. Did any of the men she knew worry about the women in their lives this way? Had her own brother cared about her needs? She thought not.

But Mr. Hartley took a breath and spoke again. “Your son is a spirited boy.”

Emeline wrinkled her nose. “Too spirited, some would say.”

“How old is he?”

“Eight this summer.”

“You employ a tutor for him?”

“Mr. Smythe-Jones. He comes in daily.” She hesitated, then said impulsively, “But Tante Cristelle thinks I should enroll him in a school like the one you attended.”

He glanced at her. “He seems too young to leave home.”

“Oh, but many fashionable families send their sons away, some much younger than Daniel.” She realized that she was twisting a bit of ribbon at her throat in her free hand, and she stopped and carefully smoothed the piece of silk. “My aunt worries that I will tie him to my apron strings. Or that he will not learn how to be a man in a house of women.” Why was she telling a near stranger these intimate details? He must think her a ninny.