Marquesses at the Masquerade(112)

*



“For God’s sake, are you a horse or an overexcited puppy?”

Attila kicked out behind, hopped left, and propped on his back legs. Because Tyne had been up too late Sunday night worrying over Amanda, Attila hadn’t left his stall since Friday. By Tuesday morning, the gelding was an unruly ball of unspent energy.

“Then let’s run,” Tyne said, aiming his horse at an empty stretch of bridle path. The park was more than three hundred acres all told, but none of the paths afforded the miles and miles of open country that Tyne and his mount needed to truly gallop off the fidgets.

This was all Miss Fletcher’s fault. Tyne had thought to press a good-night kiss to her forehead, and mayhem had ensued. The happiest, most unexpected, inconvenient… She had lifted herself into his embrace and held him for a long, aching moment in the night shadows.

And then, her kiss, ye gods her kiss. As if he’d been slumbering in some fairytale castle of old, her kiss had wakened desire and determination in equal measure. Freya’s parting gesture had been intriguing; Lucy Fletcher’s sleepy passion was riveting. She’d held nothing back, had clung to him as if her dearest secret longings could be fulfilled only by him. Tyne had hung over her recumbent form, returning her passion and longing to do more… Except that lady had clearly been exhausted, and very likely she’d been kissing a phantasm from a dream.

I want to be the lover of her dreams and the man at her side when she wakens.

The emotions that had coursed through him as he’d shared that fervent embrace with her had been wonderful—joy, hope, desire, affection—and terrible—uncertainty, loss, despair. And while Tyne abhorred drama, that embrace had answered one question for him: He was very much alive, very much still human, and that was a good, if painful, gift.

In the morning, Miss Fletcher made no mention of what had passed between them the previous night. She hadn’t so much as hesitated at the door of the breakfast parlor.

Perhaps she had no recollection of that heated embrace, but Tyne was haunted by it.

“That will do for now,” he said, bringing Attila down to the walk. The horse’s sides were heaving, but one short burst of speed wouldn’t be enough for him, just as one heartfelt embrace wasn’t enough for Tyne.

“But was she clinging to me, to some conjured shadow from her imagination, or to Throckmorton, may God rot him straight to the bottom of the river Douro?”

Tyne’s mind was made up on one point: Two weeks ago, he’d kissed a stranger on a darkened front porch. The encounter had been sweet and unexpected. That passing delight could not in any way compare to the depth of his regard for Miss Fletcher. She had seen him and his children through many difficulties, from illness, to grief, to adolescent awkwardness.

“She’s loyal, loving, resourceful, and she won’t let me slack as a papa. I suspect she wouldn’t let me slack as a husband either.” Or as a lover.

Attila snorted.

“You’re a gelding. Your opinion on the matter is uninformed.”

Tyne set the horse to cantering back up the path and spent another half hour humoring his mount’s high spirits. By the time the horse was clip-clopping up the alley to the mews, the creature was sweaty and docile, not a buck or a hop left in him.

“My attachment to Miss Fletcher is beyond doubt,” Tyne concluded as the stable came into view. “But have I engaged her affections?”

Attila sighed, a big, horsey, side-heaving exhalation.

“You are telling me I’m making this too complicated, and as usual, you are right, my friend. I must risk losing the woman my children adore—the woman I adore—and plainly state my intentions. She’ll either laugh and decamp to Portugal, or she’ll become my marchioness.”

For there could be no un-saying a declaration of intentions, no battling those words back into a sealed box, never to be recalled. No un-leaping over the precipice once honest emotions had been disclosed.

“Tomorrow,” Tyne said, patting Attila’s sweaty shoulder. “I’m expected at Eleanor’s for dinner this evening, and choosing the proper words requires some thought. Freya might wait for me briefly tonight, but I suspect she’s already come to her senses as well. A future isn’t built on a single kiss, no matter how lovely or adventurous that kiss might be.”

Tyne’s logic was sound, his mind made up. Now all he needed were the right words and endless courage. He could forgive himself for forming an unreciprocated attachment, but his daughters would never pardon him for driving Miss Fletcher away to dratted Portugal.

*



Amanda’s cold had done as colds did and given her a passing inconvenience. By noon Tuesday, she was back to bickering with Sylvie, and Lucy was more than ready to pitch the pair of them into the garden fountain.

“I am going out this afternoon,” she said, coming upon her charges by the garden fountain. “I suggest you ladies spend the hours between now and supper in neutral corners.”

“What are neutered corners?” Sylvie asked.

“Neutral,” Amanda said, punching the air. “Like when pugilists rest between rounds of a fight.”

“What are pew… puganists?”

“Pugilists,” Lucy said. “Combatants, bare-knuckle fighters. You and Amanda are cross with each other today, and I cannot bide here to referee your verbal sparring. I’ll be back well before supper.”