A Most Unusual Match. Sara Mitchell

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СКАЧАТЬ she bent to retrieve it, but Mr. Stone stepped forward and swooped it up instead, his fingers brushing hers as he returned the parasol. The jolt of sensation fried the air between them. “I would never dishonor my fiancé…” she began feebly, the once-facile lie now stumbling from her lips. “I merely need to ask you something, about someone else.”

      “Oh?”

      As if in a dream Thea watched him idly stroke the side of his nose. The vivid image of that finger brushing her nose burned a fiery trail all the way to her toes. Hot color scorched her cheeks. Her grandfather was right: despite her sophisticated education and her acquaintance with numerous intellectual gentlemen, until today she had remained unblemished emotionally. A perfectly rolled and floured biscuit which had never seen the inside of an oven.

      The friendly courtship she had enjoyed the previous summer with a neighbor’s grandson by comparison now seemed a tepid thing, ending without fanfare when the young man returned to Boston. In Thea’s opinion, romance between a man and a woman was vastly overrated.

      This is not a romance, you limp-noodled ninnyhammer.

      “Miss Pickford? You wanted to ask me about something, or someone?” Mr. Stone prompted.

      “Oh. Yes, yes I did.” Thoroughly rattled, Thea snatched a piece of straw from the bale of hay and distractedly wove it between her fingers. “I wanted to ask you about…about—you told Mrs. Van Eyck and me you planned to attend the races. It’s, ah, past two o’clock….”

      “So I did, and so it is.” Mr. Stone’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment he stared down at her without speaking. “I don’t know what to do about you,” he eventually murmured, his voice deep, the drawl warm and lazy. “You need to be more careful when you lie, and how you look at a man when your heart is promised elsewhere.”

      “Well, I’m not doing it on purpose,” she blurted, stupidly. “As for telling lies, you’re the one who pretended an acquaintance with my fiancé. How would you feel if I reported you to the local constable, or alerted—”

      The words backed up in her throat when Mr. Stone took a single long stride toward her. The scents of starch and sweat and horse filled her nostrils. Before she could react, he plucked the straw from her fingers and skimmed it along the line of her clenched jaw. “No, you won’t. You have too much to lose, don’t you, to risk that sort of attention.”

      Stepping back, he sketched a brief bow, then swiveled on his heel and sauntered down the aisle, turned a corner and disappeared.

      Thea remained motionless, one hand braced against the rough stable wall while she waited for the churning in her stomach to settle. After several moments she lifted her hand to the cheek the straw had touched. A tingle still quivered along her veins.

      This bizarre physical attraction could be contained and ultimately controlled. But the absence of any signs of vertigo from their confrontation alarmed her profoundly. Such a reaction indicated a moral weakness in her character far worse to Thea than the facade designed to procure justice on behalf of her grandfather. A godly young lady of impeccable virtue should be outraged, or even nauseous with that vertigo—the latter her reaction on the four occasions when she had spoken to Edgar Fane.

      Despite her sheltered upbringing, perhaps she had truly become her mother, whose acting skill was superseded only by her affinity for men.

      The possibility cast a murky film over the summer afternoon, but Thea refused to abandon her purpose. Life offered choices, her grandfather told her frequently. She wasn’t doomed to follow her mother’s path; she would simply choose to avoid any further encounters with Devlin Stone. Another opportunity would arise to ingratiate herself with Edgar Fane, a man for whom she would never feel anything but disgust.

      Stiffen your spine, Theodora, and get on with the task.

      Chapter Five

      With a theatrical flourish, Edgar Fane pulled the sheet covering his latest painting from the canvas. His appreciative audience—the fifty or so guests he had invited to join him aboard the Alice as the boat gently steamed across Saratoga Lake—applauded and lifted their champagne glasses to toast his artistic prowess.

      The effort was not one of his better ones. He’d chosen a seascape—hence the unveiling on the steamer—but the colors were too bright, the people on the shore more reminiscent of paint smears. The frame, however, was a lovely antique gold.

      He did like the frame, which he’d discovered in an antique store in Chicago. A satisfied tingle briefly tickled his insides.

      “Who’s the lucky recipient this time?” Richard Beekins gave his shoulder a congenial pat, wheezing noisily in Edgar’s ear as he talked. “C’mon, be a good chap and tell your daddy’s old friend.”

      Edgar gave the boozy fellow a smile, then used the excuse of setting aside the delicate champagne flute to turn away. “You know I never divulge privileged information. Everyone needs a secret or two in life. Besides, I need a gimmick to heighten the interest. We all know I’m no Michelangelo.” He winked at Dahlia, his chosen dinner partner for the afternoon boating party. “Even my charming companion here, lovely lady though she may be, couldn’t inveigle the name of the new owner.”

      Dahlia obediently pouted and fluttered her eyelashes. Diamonds twinkled in her ears, at the base of her throat and on almost every finger on both hands. “Darling Edgar, I haven’t yet tried.”

      Bored with feminine fawning, Edgar downed another flute of champagne as he smiled his way among the guests until he reached the prow of the slender steamer. Dahlia fortunately had been detained by Richard Beekins. Propping his elbows on the narrow rail, Edgar contemplated the undulation of the water, how the sunlight danced over the ripples and whether or not he could capture the effect on canvas. Not that it mattered. His forays into painting provided a useful outlet, but he’d never intended to pursue the craft seriously. On the other hand, perhaps a studied dedication would offer an antidote to the ennui plaguing him the past few years.

      “You’re looking far too solemn.” Cynthia Gorman’s scent filled the air before the woman herself joined Edgar, close enough for the wind to blow her lawn skirts against his trousers. “You’ve been brooding most of the afternoon. What is it, Edgar?”

      “Can’t a man enjoy the sun on his head and the wind in his face for a minute or two?”

      “Not Edgar Fane, apparently.” Her laugh drifted pleasantly over the water. “When I spied you off by yourself for once, I grabbed the opportunity. You’re the only member of your family I can stand being around for longer than a half hour, you know.”

      “Because I don’t try and seduce you out of your fortune, or because I don’t talk about mine?”

      “My dear man, yours is the only seduction I might contemplate, but we both know that’s never going to happen, so why don’t you try me as a confidante? I can keep a secret.”

      Edgar’s impatience erupted in a burst of laughter, which naturally offended Cynthia. He laid his hand against her heliotrope-scented cheek. “Don’t,” he murmured. “You know I love you dearly—”

      “As you love all the other women in your harem…”

      “Precisely. All a delight to the eyes, but I have no intention of confining my delight or confiding secrets to any of them. Thanks to my brothers and sister making more money and producing heirs, I СКАЧАТЬ