Page 42 of A Lady of Means
“I’m afraid the fault is mine, sir.I was so in thought over the vicar’s words I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
Others around them stopped.She was no stranger to being noticed, it was merely encouragement for her performance.She feigned shyness, all blushes as the captain bowed and made an introduction.
“I’m afraid I’ll intrude upon your good manners further…I’m Captain Winter, my lady,” he said with a smile, as if the name wasn’t already dear to her as air, as if she hadn’t traced her fingers over it written on parchment for over a year.She saw her sister Noelle open her mouth to speak, brow furrowed, but Fitz was ushering her in the opposite direction, heads conferring together.
Devyn, with the aid of her loyal friends, was gifting her a proper introduction.One they could repeat years later at dinner parties.They…we…a shared possessive similar to the dark gleam in his all-too-familiar eyes.
Moria turned to the Vicar behind her, only to see the young man of God grinning in Miss Kelley’s direction.Both shepherd and wolf simultaneously.Bridget winked back at Moria.
Be brave, said Bridget Kelley’s green eyes.
“Lady Moria Pembrooke, sir.”She gave the captain her name, watching his eyes caught on her full lips.Moria didn’t blush, at least she thought she didn’t, she was used to controlling her blushes instead of the other way around.
“A beautiful name,” the way the words escaped him with that cheeky half tug of a smile, she knew he was thinking of the willow tree, of their game, of their informal introduction that felt like another life ago.
And then, her entire family descended upon them with the full force of all their well-meaning wholesomeness, all of them talking to her at once.
Jasper glanced at the other man; eyebrow raised.The captain extended a hand cordially.
And before Moria knew what had happened, the Captain had won every one of them over with his artfully polite words, his manners, some distant connection he’d likely stolen from her letters or concocted from thin air, and his good-natured laugh.When he complimented her nephew, Moria saw the approval in Kathleen’s eyes.
She heard her eldest sister inviting him for the christening meal along with the other celebrants invited to partake, and Moria heard him give his assent.She was just looking at him.Lookingwas such a simple, innocuous word; but the sight of him made the word a religious act.
She looked over her shoulder for the Vicar, who gave her a sheepish smile.
“You lead the way, my lady,” the captain was planting a kiss on her gloved hand, placing it in the crook of his massive arm.Those lips had kissed other parts of her as well.Here she stood lying before her family and her village and God and the image of Mary and John the Baptist and Apostle Paul in the stained-glass windows, lying to all of them that this new suitor was a stranger until this day.
He grinned, a smile that reached his eyes, reached her very soul.
He was worth it.
ChapterNineteen
Moria,either a beautiful liar or just out-of-touch, had described her family’s country estate as “modest.”He was no stranger to country estates, having grown up the rightful heir to Wintersea Manor, but Brookevale Park’s sixteen bedrooms and the lake behind it made him seem like the “modest” one.
“Your house is…nice.”he’d said, walking three paces behind the rest of her family, arm in arm, on the way from the church when a Jacobean manor came into view.
“I know, right?”
Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to intimidate him.He was intimidated anyway.How was he to compete with an orangery and a boat house and an armory and a stable with twenty-three of England’s finest horses?Her younger sister was running a veritable undomesticated animal halfway house.And he shared a townhouse off Belgravia with Calum.Moria’s fingers flexed around his arm, pulling him back to the present.Back to her, and the fresh dotting of freckles on the bridge of her nose from a couple days in the country.
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” he said.
Jasper eyed him over the luncheon table in a breakfast room in which the windows had been opened to let in a breeze and they’d had to pull up extra chairs to accommodate everyone.It was more than nice.
“You look terribly familiar, Captain.Have we met before?”
To Moria’s left, her sister, the bespectacled viscountess from the masquerade, made a soft choking noise, her husband giving her small attentive pats on her back.Devyn found it ironic the inhabitant of a guise like hers found such difficulty with a ruse when someone else was playing it.
“Perhaps you are acquainted with my brother, the Earl of Clairville?”Devyn answered the Earl.
“I believe he was a few years ahead of me at Harrow.Before he inherited from your uncle, and before I inherited, we both attended a house party with some legendary shooting at the late Duke of Andover’s place in Somerset.”
Devyn was born to a title, but he didn’t know how the other man managed such a broad slate of affairs, with two unmarried sisters to boot.Moria had been distracting Devyn enough from his duties that a couple of his men had commented on it.He had only a short furlough before he’d be shipping overseas, and he didn’t care what anyone thought of how he spent them.
As usual, his defense was self-deprecating humor when he had to talk, and quiet stoicism when he didn’t.His seat at the tea table offered him the perfect view of the woman he’d crawl on glass to make his.She was wearing a dress that was white, set off by a shade of green that deepened the gold rings inside of her blue eyes.The slope of her shoulders and the curve of her breasts were edged in a lace he wondered matched what she was wearing underneath.Had the sun kissed the skin beneath those undergarments too?
Mother of god, she had him noticing her clothes and thinking about her undergarments.He was beyond hope.
