Page 52 of The Forger and the Duke
“Married to Tew, teaching the bairns to brew, and wondering every day if she chose aright,” Amaranthe answered.
“Jealous, are you?” Mal bent close, his nose behind her ear. His breath fanned her neck, and she shivered. His lips hovered a hair’s breadth above her skin.
“Don’t be daft.” She pushed her pile of chopped turnip towards the bowl. “And don’t take liberties,” she added. “Your aunt and uncle will see you.”
“They’ll approve. Didn’t you hear? Bea gave us her blessing.” He pressed his nose into her hair. “Mmm. You smell like turnip.”
She let her knife hang in the air but found she had no wish to push him away. If she turned her head slightly, his lips would brush her cheek. And if she turned just a bit more, her lips would meet his, and?—
She didn’t dare find out what would happen after that.
She laid the knife on the table.Coward.
He’d been a gentleman the three-day trip to Bristol, looking out for both women, arranging for the best rooms at the coaching inns, ordering dinners in private parlors. Amaranthe found she had nothing to do but make up the bed with the linens she’d brought from home and brush out the duchess’s riding habit each night, removing the dust of the road. Mal saw to everything, the changing of horses, inspecting the carriage, and when the weather was fine he and Joseph took turns sharing the open back seat with the women.
She and Mal had spent hours together on the road, and he was a far better companion than either Miss Pettigrew, who was cautiously silent and appeared ever on edge, or Joseph, who was preoccupied with Miss Pettigrew. Mal on the other hand spoke with her long and amusingly of his childhood, his schools and studies, the sights of London that he’d seen. He’d regaled her with tale after tale of Beatrice and Littlejohn and life at the Green Man, to the point that when the chaise turned into Bristol’s OldMarket and the pair poured out to meet them, Amaranthe felt she was being welcomed by friends.
But this was the first time since that moment in her parlor that he’d pressed close or tried to touch her. She held still in fear. What if his touch was as revolting as Reuben’s had been? What if it wasn’t just her cousin but the very touch of a man that she reviled?
“Unless you be wanting to post the banns here and marry from the Green Man, you’ll be treating her like the gentle miss she is, me lad,” Bea warned as she reappeared in the kitchen. “Littlejohn, me love, find our Mal else more to do, won’t you? Idle hands are the devil’s work, I be thinking.”
Amaranthe sighed as he moved away, claiming that he’d meant nothing untoward and a man couldn’t be faulted if he wanted to be near Miss Amaranthe. His playfulness and his potency left her nervous and jumpy long after he left the room. The warmth curling through her middle told her she might feel much differently about Mal’s hands on her body than Reuben’s unwanted advances, but fear that she might be wrong kept her from moving toward his embrace. Her fear might be safer than the truth.
Amaranthe bid Josephgoodbye the next day with a few admonitions and no tears. He shrugged off her cautions to take care on the road and be wary of robbers, and to write her at Penwellen if he had need. Joseph only had eyes for Miss Pettigrew, who looked peaked and resolved in a plain grey bonnet and cloak. The nearer they drew to the small town in Gloucestershire where she’d been raised, the more Miss Pettigrew reverted to her proper and retiring Quaker roots, setting aside the fashionable bonnet and fur-lined cape she’d worn from London. She’d had little to say to any of them, evenJoseph, and Amaranthe worried at what her lack of warmth signified.
Of course, Amaranthe herself was making a point not to hang too much upon Malden Grey, particularly here where he was among his family. She might feel a great deal of warmth, but she attempted to keep it within reasonable limits of expression. Perhaps Miss Pettigrew was being equally conscious about any show of preference, but inwardly felt all for Joseph that she ought to feel for a man she was inclined to give her hand to.
“But if you do convert. To the Quakers, that is.” Amaranthe held to the frame of the hired gig as Joseph leapt up to the driver’s seat. “They won’t keep you from us, will they? That is, you won’t have to repudiate me to join them?”
“Anth, don’t be a peagoose.” He didn’t spare a glance for her. “I won’t throw you over when I marry. I’ve already said you’ll have a home with us, didn’t I? You’ll be able to dandle your nieces and nephews on your knee from their first days. Consider Favella’s brat practice.”
“Don’t marry in haste, mind,” Amaranthe retorted. “I want at least to attend your wedding.”
Joseph turned to ensure his passenger was settled, and his expression went soft as he watched Miss Pettigrew tuck her skirts around her. Beneath the plain grey bonnet the delicate lines of her face were achingly lovely.
“I’ll marry her the moment she’ll have me,” he said with a foolish, lovestruck grin. “An angel come down to earth, she is.”
He chucked the horses to walk on and lifted a hand in farewell as the gig passed from the broad courtyard of the coaching inn to the busy Old Market beyond. Miss Pettigrew did not wave.
“That’s trouble, there,” Mal said low in her ear. Amaranthe startled to find him standing next to her in a sheltered corner of the yard, apart from the traffic to and from the stables or theflow of passengers seeking relief in the common room, where Bea’s hearty stew and Littlejohn’s equally hearty laugh awaited them.
“What do you mean?” Amaranthe asked, fearing highwaymen, an accident that overturned them on the road. It happened all too often.
“A man who wears that look for a woman is bound to have his heart broken in two,” Mal said.
She glanced up into his face and found his expression serious. His blue eyes, so often sparkling with merriment these past days, were quiet and somber.
“He will?” Her own heart clutched as if she’d taken a blow. Joseph was the closest person in the world to her, the only family she had left. “You don’t think she feels the same for him.”
“She certainly doesn’t look at him in the same way. As if he hung the moon and could make the stars dance if he wanted.”
That odd pain rippled through her chest again. No one had ever looked at her as if she hung the moon. But how foolish to wish such a thing. “You can’t know it will mean heartbreak,” she said. “She may simply be very reserved.”
“It’s true, I can’t know her heart. But I know that’s the look I wore for Sally. And it’s the look my father wore when he met Sybil, come to that.”
“But your father married Sybil.” Her heart, ridiculously, sank in her chest. She wished the organ would stay in its proper place. Mal had looked at his sweet Sally with adoration. He had lost his heart to another woman, long ago.
“It’s calf love,” Mal said. “Sentimental and self-indulgent. ’Tis not how a man looks at the woman he considers his proper mate.”
