Page 23 of Loving Mister Stratford
Shefford propped the weighted head of his mallet against his broad shoulder.
His wife nibbled the corner of her lip before looking back at her elder brother.
Odette caught Meredith’s eye and there was a brief moment where her concern went unchecked before she pasted on a cheery smile.
Odette was no simpleton. She knew quite well they were all fretting over the fact that their group still had an odd number. Her fiancé had yet to make his appearance.
As each of the seconds ticked by like a deafening heartbeat, Odette tried not to focus on the glances filled with both concern and pity, the way her eyes began to burn, how her nose began to prickle. She willed herself not to cry. She’d taken such pride in her strength throughout all of this—her determination to refrain from being a demanding, insecure woman; to remain understanding and patient with Simon—but this afternoon was just about all she could take. Were she a bolder, more confident woman, she might have stomped throughout the manor, slamming open doors until she located her wayward betrothed.
But she wasn’t.
And she didn’t.
She closed her eyes once again, trying to use the warmth of the sun as it jumped out from behind another cloud to bolster her smile. She filled her lungs with the petrichor emanating from the earth around them and, although it went against her nature, she took a lesson from her mother: She injected her spine with steel and tapped her mallet on the soft grass beneath her feet before speaking with more cheer and conviction than she felt.“Shall we begin? I’m eager to watch and learn.”
“Of course!” Lily jumped in brightly and proceeded to (none-too-subtly) nudge her husband into motion after it was agreed that the ladies would team against the gentlemen.“Normally, we would allow you to start off the game as our guest, but, seeing as how you’ll be family in a matter of days, I’ll begin and you can watch how we take our turns.”
The game progressed through turns as Lily and then Meredith stood a specific way and knocked their painted balls across the grass with measured force. When Sommerfeld would have insisted Odette take her turn next, she declined with a shake of her head and deferred to both the gentlemen, claiming she needed more time to examine the proper form.
She became more relaxed as each took their turn and they all slid away from the awkwardness of Simon’s absence. The ribbing between siblings and spouses was unbelievably warm and amusing; she’d had to mask a bubble of laughter when Lily quite irritatedly swatted her brother’s sleeve after his ball knocked hers to the wayside.
“Your turn, Miss Leroy,” Meredith said with a smile, yanking Odette’s attention back to the task at hand. She eyed the orange-sized wooden orb nestled in the lawn before her and was suddenly, absurdly, unaccountably intimidated by the cerulean blue object. She swallowed past the lump in her throat, attempting to brush aside the knowledge that all eyes were on her once again. She puffed out a bracing breath and took up what she hoped was a sufficiently confident position.
“Your hands are all wrong.”
Odette’s head whipped up to find Simon striding toward her across the plush carpet of grass. So surprised and thrilled was she at his sudden appearance that she forgot all of her anxieties from before, all of her frustrations and embarrassment. He may have disappeared for several days, he may have been late, but he’d still shown up. Her eyes began to burn for an entirely different reason.
His long stride devoured the last several feet to where she stood, the mallet held limply in her numb fingers.
He’d bathed very recently, she pondered dumbly as she eyed his damp golden hair curling slightly at his temples, and freshly-shaven jawline. His starched cravat and dark coat, charcoal waistcoat and fitted breeches, and boots polished to an unholy shine were immaculate. And the man that filled them, even more so.
“Miss Leroy,” he inclined his head and the deepness of his tone sent a barely suppressed shiver up and down her spine.“Odette,” he spoke more softly for her ears only. This close, she could smell his soap, the clean, masculine scent of his skin.
His mouth twitched as if hesitant to see how welcoming she’d be to a smile, and she wished he would with every fiber of her being. She wished they were alone so she could run her thumb along his lower lip and help it along, to savor the softness she knew resided there.
“May I?” he asked gently as the pad of his thumb brushed the back of her hand. Odette all but dropped the handle of the mallet and leaped backward as if burned.
“Y—Yes, please do,” she stammered, praying his siblings and their spouses were outside of earshot. The sight of his long, elegant fingers (now scrubbed pink and mostly clean of ink stains) entranced her.
“Your grip is too high,” Simon explained and demonstrated the proper hand positioning before giving it a few experimental swings, the heavy mallet head gracefully skimming across the blades of grass. It seemed he did more than just dance with unexpected elegance.
“Come,” he gestured to her, snapping her from her trance.
She stepped forward and accepted the proffered mallet shaft, then allowed him to properly position her hands. She tried to remain calm when the sensation of his fingers on hers brought back the memories of the way he’d touched her and held her. Kissed her.
He proceeded to stand behind her and show her how to swing the mallet so it connected with the ball. She felt the heat rolling off of the length of his body to caress her back. He stood improperly close with his arms wrapped around her, his head leaning mere inches from hers, but no one on the lawn said a word. In fact, their fellow competitors took great pains to allow the scene to play out as it would. Odette vacillated between gratitude and mortification. She could count the number of times he’d been this close to her on a single hand—less than that if she were truthful. And she looked forward to it occurring more often if she were honest.
They moved fluidly together, practicing several gentle test swings before Simon stepped back and allowed her to try her hand. The mallet connected with the ball with a satisfying click and rolled—if not even with—at least in the right direction of the other balls to remain in the game. Odette bounced with a little whoop of glee and found her betrothed watching her intently, his green eyes glittering with some unreadable expression.
She could get lost in those eyes. She could melt against the strong wall of his body. For all his faults, she couldn’t help but be drawn to him.
Odette knew she should have been furious with him for his neglect of her since she arrived at Bridleton. She should have given in to her desires to storm through the manor and drag him out of hiding by his ear like a wayward lad. But all of that fled now that he stood before her. Her anxieties, if not banished entirely, were lightened by his presence. And, somehow, she knew he felt the same.
Separate, they were less than they were when they were together. Each provided an unexpected comfort to the other.
“Kind of you to join the land of the living, brother!” Sommerfeld called over to them, breaking the mysterious spell between Odette and Simon.“Take up a mallet and join in the game.”
Simon turned and retrieved the final mallet and ball, dropping the goldenrod yellow orb to the grass, measuring his shot, and sending it sailing into the fray. Sommerfeld cursed as his crimson ball bounced into a puddle collected between the twining roots of an oak tree.
