Page 10 of A Lady of Means
“And are you… an untrained observer?”She was sitting toe-to-toe with him in a small wooden boat, looking away and trying to hide that she was watching the tight repetitive movements of his shoulders and arms as he’d rowed them downriver.
“A man doesn’t rise to an officer in Her Majesty’s Army without being disciplined and detail oriented, my lady.But of you?”He shook his head like he was being silly, but knew what was on his mind was what she wanted from him.
“I notice everything.You fancy yourself well-versed in subtlety and hiding your true emotions and intentions, but I study it all.The pinch between your brows and the rigid way you hold your shoulders…the way your eyelashes flutter or when you're holding your hands in your lap just a little too tightly.I hear you, even when you’re saying nothing at all.I do that too… learned to hide my thoughts so the men I lead don’t hear them.We aren’t that unalike you and I.”
She looked at him, at his lips more specifically, another one of her subtle tells.She cleared her throat and looked down at her hands, which were tightly and primly folded in her lap, and then back at him.They barely made it out of sight of her red-haired chaperone before she’d tossed back her bonnet and taken his face in both of her small hands and he’d let her.
He’d held her lithe, tight body in his grateful hands.He’d fantasized about kissing her lips, taking the stunning bow of them with his own and drinking in every sound she made like they were the water sustaining him.But if he did, he’d be just like the scores that wanted to claim her, to have her, but that wasn’t whatthiswas.There couldn’t be a woman this artfully crafted by God in Christendom, and she was there, with him, on a rowboat on a summer day, delicately closing her eyes at the feel of his hands pulling her to lean against his chest, legs tangling with his.
When he closed his eyes at night, he saw her looking back at him when she stepped back onto the shore, admiration in her perfect eyes and one side of her sinful mouth curving into a smile.
He’d have given up his army commission simply to kiss her, but he was afraid to let her know it.There was talk that she’d been courted by a Duke, and then there had been her sister’s wedding and her returning to the country at the end of the season, and his being shipped off with his company to Belgium for nearly eight long months.
And so, when the biting winds of winter came, he had sustained himself on the bonfire of a woman tucked away in his consciousness and yes, a woman or two who didn’t look a thing like her just to prove to himself that she didn’t mean anything and didn’t have her tentacles and hooks sunk into and through him, but of course she did.He was lying to himself and a fool to boot.He’d given way more of the corners of his heart (fine, more than the corners, it was the prime real estate too) to a woman who seemed to not know what in hell she wanted or did indeed know and didn’t want the inconvenience of wanting it.
“I see you haven’t given up this…attraction…to Lady Macbeth,” Peregrine observed, taking the scandal sheet from Devyn’s hands and looking it over.“I’ll say this for the girl, she always looks fierce, and she always wins; but she hasn’t been easy to woo.In your absence, the Earl of Essex allegedly proposed to her five times and each proposal was increasingly more elaborate.She reportedly told the poor sod that she was “undeserving” of his attention and suggested he find someone more “worthy.”A hallmark maneuver of a true diplomat to be sure, or a duchess.”
“The Duke of Andover’s still courting her then?”Devyn said, casually draping an arm over the boot kicked up atop his knee as if all his hopes weren’t riding on the answer.He felt there was some great tragedy, something in her past that drove her to occupy thoughts of a Duke, of an illustrious title, while still writing to Devyn, a mere soldier.
Peregrine took his time answering, seemingly only to torment him.“Well, you missed all the most interesting bits of that whole drama,” Devyn raised a brow for his brother to continue.“His Grace announced in Parliament that he’d overthrow the opposition’s bill before taking a wife.”
Devyn popped a grape in his mouth.“Level-headed, I see.Not theatrical at all.”
“The papers loved that one.‘She’s either saving herself for a Prince, or-”
“A man who knows the way to win her isn’t through self-interested gestures only for show?”Devyn ventured, his brows kissing in the middle.
“And pray tell what ‘gestures’ have you gone to the effort to do for her?”
Another man would see this as a jibe, but this tenor of conversation gulfed the 9 years between them.They were two sides to the same coin; where Peregrine had been an apprentice octogenarian his entire life, Devyn thrived on joking and carousing when he wasn’t warrioring.
Devyn clutched his chest dramatically, miming as though Peregrine had wounded him in the heart.He relied on humor as a general rule; people found him more amenable and palatable that way with his large size, but damn if his brother didn’t have a point.Devyn could turn said point around on his brother and ask what ladies a titled gentleman of more than marriageable age had made gestures for, but Devyn never pried.If Peregrine wanted him to know, he’d have told him.Perry suffered no such compunction.
Devyn glanced at the portrait to his left of two dark haired brothers, the older one tall and sleek and more serious looking than any boy of 14 ought to be, a curly headed miniature nearly a decade younger clutching his hand, to remind himself of all the things he usually liked about his brother.
Peregrine lifted a solicitous, persistent brow as if awaiting an answer.
Devyn knew the answer.
I have written to her every day for over a year.I’ve taken her rowing.I watched her shoot arrows through not just a target but my own heart on an archery pitch.I took her to a tavern one night when she slipped out of her house in a hooded cloak and said, “I want to see where you spend your time.Not the things that you’re supposed to do, but where do you go when you aren’t a warrior?”We spent an evening drinking, eating tavern food.I had the most unencumbered and open conversation I had ever had in my life.She’d said, “I think we can make room for another one of your men at our table,” when Belcher had shown up late, and she’d hooked an arm around my neck and pulled herself into my lap to raucous cheers from 16 of my men and the entire tavern.Her hand rested on my thigh for a moment, she whispered in my ear, “I’d never thought a man of your size could blush,” and when she pulled back and laughed, her hand covered her mouth the way my body wanted to.And I took that hand and kissed her small finger, the finger where significant rings go, and I told her, “They all think I belong to you.Tell me one day I will.”“You don’t already?”she shot back.I gave her the most raucous laugh, Calum and Blaise started laughing too.And when her blue-gold eyes didn’t leave my face, her fingers playing over mine, I gave her what was left that she hadn’t already stolen right out from under me.
Devyn didn’t say that.He hid his inner workings behind a well-timed sip of tea from one of the much-too-small teacups at his brother’s table.
He wasn’t sure it meant anything to anyone but him.A man who made much of little as a general rule.
“She’s worth every effort and every length I could go to.I’m simply afraid that, in the end-”
“You won’t be enough?”Peregrine cut right to the heart of the matter.Devyn saw earnest understanding, a brotherhood that left room for failings and misgivings, and was given the courage to try again.
“You could make this easier on your only living relation and arrange a formal meeting yourself,” Devyn parried, devouring one of the miniscule tea sandwiches on a silver tray in a single bite.
Peregrine pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.“Devyn, remind me why I haven’t cut off your allowance already.Or better yet, forced you to come home and claim the title that belongs to you.”
Peregrine had only been their father’s legitimate heir until Devyn had been born years later to a second wife.By rights, the inheritance and the family estate should have gone to Devyn, but Devyn felt as ill-fitted to a title and its myriad obligations as he did to the formal tea table he was sitting at.He wasn’t cut out for this, not the way that Peregrine was.
Devyn set down the scone that was in his hand, wiping his hand on the napkin draped over his buckskin-clad thigh.“Peregrine, you are father’s heir.I am the spare.I am a warrior, that has always been the case-”
“But what about your lady?Does it make you want to change the status quo now that you could have her if she knew that a title was within your grasp?”
