The Louise Allen Collection. Louise Allen

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      His shirt was open at the neck, showing a tantalising glimpse of dark hair, the sleeves were rolled up, exposing strong forearms with elegantly long muscles, his hands were raised in mock menace and he was smiling with absolute confidence that she would yield. His body heat seemed to wash over her, bringing the startlingly arousing scent of fresh sweat, hot man and leather.

      Decima thought wildly that she had never seen anything more male in her life, and that included the stallion in the next stall. Suddenly she knew she could not deal with this; she was out of her depth, playing with forces she did not understand, and whatever happened next she was about to make an utter fool of herself.

      ‘Here.’ She thrust the leather into his hands and slid down, under the horse and up the other side where, thank God, it seemed possible to breathe. ‘You win. I’ll go and cook breakfast.’ Her exit from the stables was, she was certain, anything but dignified.

       Chapter Six

      Any fool could cook bacon and eggs, surely? Even a fool who let herself be entranced by a virile man who had nothing else on his mind other than passing a few days’ isolation by flirting with an old maid. Decima peered miserably into the mirror that hung in the scullery above the small basin where she was scrubbing her hands.

      ‘Look at you,’ she muttered angrily. Her nose was pink, her cheeks flushed. The beastly freckles stood out as though each one had been individually touched in with sepia ink. Her hair was all over the place and she looked positively haggard from lack of sleep. In fact, she looked every one of her twenty-seven years, if not more. She pulled a face at herself, then winced at the way it widened her mouth. Her wide mouth was not the worst of her faults, she had been given to understand, just one of many, but it did not help. Fishy lips, her unkind young cousins had called her when they were children.

      She realised that she was having to stoop in order to look in the mirror that the housekeeper and the maid used every day. Doubtless they were normal-sized women, not fairground oddities.

      Fool, fool, fool. How did she think she could turn herself from the passive, quiet freak of an unmarried sister into an independent, assured woman who experienced life on her own terms? Possibly it was achievable, but not in the space of a day and a night, not in the company of an experienced man of the world who was just too much of a gentleman to laugh at her.

      He laughs with me, the pathetic little inner voice mumbled, he finds me amusing. The old, cynical destructive voice snapped back, Just like you’d find a child aping its elders amusing, no doubt. It hadn’t needed that brandy last night to turn her head, she had been drunk on freedom and excitement and the edge of danger and she had behaved like…like a fool. Why search for another word when that one summed it up so neatly?

      Decima scrubbed her hands viciously on a towel, threw off her shawl and found an apron. Bacon, bread, the one egg. Enough for three, for Bates must surely be awake and hungry by now.

      Knife, bread board, toasting fork. What do you cook bacon in? A frying pan, presumably. Fat.

      She moved around the larder, gathering things up, forcing herself to work out timings to keep the apprehension at bay. He would be back in a minute, wondering why she had fled in that idiotic way.

      In the event there was a pile of only slightly charred toast on the table and the bacon was sizzling nicely—provided one had a fancy for it crispy—by the time the back door opened.

      Decima kept her back to the door, busying herself pouring hot water over the coffee grounds.

      ‘All done,’ Adam said cheerfully, as though she had not just fled in disarray from a game she had initiated. ‘That bacon smells good.’

      Hastily, Decima flipped it onto a platter before it went any blacker. How did one fry eggs? Tentatively, she cracked it on the edge of the frying pan, then leapt backwards as the contents landed on the fat in an explosion of spitting droplets.

      ‘Too hot.’ Adam leaned across her and lifted the pan off the heat while the egg spluttered and went white with an uneven frill of brown around the edges.

      ‘It’s spoilt,’ Decima said, alarmed to find that her voice trembled.

      ‘No, it’s not.’ Adam slid it out onto the platter where it sat, the yolk looking decidedly underdone in its hard brown-and-white ruff. ‘I’ll wash and then take Bates’s food up. I will not be a minute.’

      Decima buttered toast and put it with bacon, a pot of jam and a mug of coffee onto a tray, pushing it across the table to Adam as he emerged from the scullery. ‘I hope he feels better this morning and his leg is not paining him too much.’

      ‘More likely his head.’ Adam grinned and lifted the tray. ‘I’ll check on Pru while I’m up there.’

      Automatically Decima set the table, buttered the rest of the toast, put out the jam and the platter of bacon. It looked decidedly overcooked, but somehow, against all the odds, the kitchen table seemed homely and charming with the fragrant bacon and the chairs close to the warmth of the range. Why that should so overset her she had no idea, but her eyes filled with tears, a sob caught in her throat and before she knew what she was doing she was sitting down, her face in the apron, weeping.

      ‘Hey! What’s this? Decima?’ Adam was on his knees by her side, gently prising the apron from her face. ‘Have you burnt yourself?’

      ‘No, I am sorry, this is ridiculous, I’m not crying, I never cry.’ She tried to hide her face again and was firmly prevented. Adam pressed a large white handkerchief into her hands.

      ‘Never?’

      ‘Never.’ Her voice wavered. This was dreadful. Her nose would be red, her eyes red, her face blotchy.

      ‘Oh well, then, if you aren’t crying,’ Adam said briskly, ‘you are sick of the mulligrubs. That is easily cured.’

      ‘The what?’ Decima emerged cautiously from the shelter of the white linen.

      ‘Mulligrubs. Look, come and eat something, that’s the best thing to cure them. It ought to be cake, or sweets—the stickier the better—but bacon will do.’ He heaped a plate and pushed it towards her. ‘Go on.’ This had to be some kind of dream. A viscount, sitting in his breeches and shirtsleeves at a kitchen table, eating her burnt offerings and discussing mulligrubs.

      ‘But what are mulligrubs?’ The bacon smelled delicious. Decima took a forkful, chewed, followed it with a bite of toast and the wobbly feeling inside subsided.

      ‘I am not sure exactly.’ Adam was gingerly cutting into the egg. ‘It’s what my old nurse used to call it when I was a little boy and was cast down or in the dumps for no good reason. But food always works.’

      ‘Do you…do you get the mulligrubs often now?’ she enquired. He ate the egg without any expression of revulsion; perhaps her cooking was not that bad.

      ‘I haven’t had them for years. I suspect they go away if there isn’t anyone around to cure them with a dose of toffee. Bates is awake and appreciating your bacon, too. He says that his blanking leg is hurting like blank, if his lordship will excuse him saying so, and he’d have done СКАЧАТЬ