When he drew back, she looked pensive. "I don"t suppose this was your first ... well ... intimate encounter."
"No. But neither have I had a hundred, like your brothers."
"A hundred!" She looked horrified. "So many?"
He shouldn"t have said that. "I"m probably exaggerating."
She thought a moment, then sighed. "Probably not. They were awful rogues until they married." She gazed up at him with an earnest expression. "Perhaps "proper" isn"t so bad after all."
"I can think of worse nicknames," he said, remembering the wide variety of epithets flung at him in his youth.
"At least n.o.body ever called you Elf."
She looked so delightfully put out that he couldn"t help but chuckle. "How on earth did that come about, anyway?"
"I honestly don"t know." She rested her head on her hand. "Papa said it was because I had pointy ears, which is nonsense, of course. And Nurse said it was because I was small. But all children are small."
He gazed down at her pixie nose and the pensive expression on her heart-shaped face. "I have a theory."
"Oh?"
"Sometimes, when you"re deep in thought, you have an otherworldly look about you that makes one think of creatures from another realm-sprites and dryads and nymphs. I imagine it did make you look a bit like an elf when you were small."
She eyed him skeptically. "I don"t look like an elf now, do I? Because I should warn you that no one in my family has been allowed to call me Elf in many years, upon pain of death. And I"m not rescinding that for you."
"Then I"ll call you Fairy Queen. That"s what you look like to me."
She cast him a dazzling smile. "You do give excellent compliments, Jackson. It quite redeems your other sins."
"And what sins are those?" he drawled.
"Being condescending. Hiding your true feelings." Eyes sparkling, she pulled his head down to hers. "Taking months and months in getting around to kissing me."
"I must have been mad," he murmured before kissing her again.
This time it led to more kisses, then caresses ... the hot, sweet sort that set his blood aflame. Though he protested that she must be too sore to make love, she ignored him and did her best to rouse him to madness.
So he ensured she was rapt with enjoyment beneath him before he entered her again, plunging so deeply into her warmth that he thought he might perish of the pleasure.
It was only long afterward, as she lay asleep in his arms, that he realized he"d already stopped protecting his heart.
And that wouldn"t do. Because if he weren"t careful, he could easily find it trampled beneath the boots of the Sharpe family fortune.
Chapter Twenty.
Celia was freezing. She pulled the oddly thick blanket over her bare shoulders just as she heard someone stoking up a fire nearby.
"Gillie," she muttered. "Put an extra log on, will you?"
"Not Gillie," said a man"s voice, sounding vaguely irritated. "No servants here, I"m afraid. You"ll have to settle for me."
She bolted upright, jerking the blanket to her chest as several things. .h.i.t her at once. She wasn"t in her own bed. She was naked. And Jackson stood a few feet away, wearing only a pair of drawers, an unb.u.t.toned shirt, and a frown.
Everything from the night before came back to her-the race through the woods, the discovery of the cottage ... the lovemaking.
Heat flooded her cheeks at that last memory.
He seemed to notice, for his expression softened before he picked up his pistol and began to clean it. The last time she"d seen it, it was loaded. When had he emptied it? And how long had he been up, anyway?
"Go back to sleep," he murmured. "There"s still an hour before dawn. I"ll wake you when it"s closer to time to leave."
Was the man daft? Did he really think she could sleep while he walked about the cottage preparing for their escape from unknown a.s.sailants?
Apparently, he did. But since she couldn"t oblige him, she shifted to her side to watch him work.
He was swift and efficient, rather like a soldier must be. In minutes, he had the pistol cleaned and shining before he loaded it with fresh, dry powder and a patch-wrapped ball. Then he packed up his gun kit and tucked it into one saddlebag before pulling out a stiff brush.
In the process, something fell from the bag, which he picked up, opening it to stare at it. From where she lay, it looked like a watch, but he was gazing at it too long for that.
Curiosity got the better of her. "What is it?"
He started, then carried the object over. She sat up, keeping his surtout tucked up around her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as he handed it to her. It was a rather large locket on a fob. When she opened it, she found three portrait miniatures, one of which was affixed to a metal leaf in the middle so that the first portrait sat alone and the second sat opposite the third.
"Uncle had them done by an artist friend of his after Mother and I went to live with him and Aunt Ada in London twenty-two years ago." Jackson pointed to the first image, of a pale and fragile young woman with dark hair and a wan smile. "That"s Mother."
She stared at it, her heart in her throat. "She was beautiful."
"She was indeed." His voice grew choked. "Although less so in this portrait. She was already ill by the time this was done."
Hoping to lighten his mood, she looked at the other portrait, as blond as the first was dark, with merry eyes. "And this is your aunt, I take it?"
A faint smile touched his lips. "Yes. With my uncle opposite."
She stared at his uncle, a handsome man in his youth. "You look like him."
"That"s impossible," he said dryly. "He"s not my uncle by blood, remember? He married my mother"s sister."
"Oh, right. I forgot." She gazed closely at the portrait. The man was slighter in build, but ... "I still say you look like him."
Jackson"s gaze narrowed on the portrait. Then he cast her a cold glance. "Don"t be ridiculous. There"s no resemblance at all."
"I grant you, his hair is arranged differently, but see there, where his nose is thin like yours, and his eyes are deeply set? And he has your jaw."
A strange look crossed his face, before he took the locket and snapped it shut. "He doesn"t look like me. It"s absurd-no one else has ever noticed any such thing."
As he headed back to the saddlebag with the locket, his back stiff, it dawned on her what he must have thought she was saying. Oh, dear. She hadn"t been implying ... She would never hint...
Oh, well. Best to leave that alone now. Any apology she could offer would only make it worse.
And clearly she didn"t want to do that-he was now in quite a temper. Picking up the brush, he went to work on his muddy boots as if his life depended on making them shine.
"Would you like me to do that?" she asked.
"Have you ever cleaned boots before?"
"Well, no, but how hard can it be? I don"t mind helping."
A shuttered look crossed his face, and his brushing grew positively manic. "Don"t worry about it. I"ve done it every day of my life for the past twenty-five years, and I imagine I"ll be doing it every day for the next thirty or more, G.o.d willing."
Oh, dear, Proud Pinter had shown up with a vengeance this morning. She was surprised he hadn"t called her "my lady" yet.
"Don"t you have servants at all?" she asked.
"Not to help me dress," he said in a hard tone as he brushed madly at his boots. "Men like me don"t have valets. That probably won"t change if ... when we marry."
Had he really said "if"? Had it been a slip of the tongue borne of not being used to the thought? Or something else?
It set her on edge. And made her determined to banish Proud Pinter. "And why should you have a valet when you already know how to clean boots so well?" she quipped. "I do hope you"re as good with lady"s boots. I prefer mine brushed with horse hair, but if you insist on whatever you"re using there, I suppose I can tolerate it."
He lifted a stern gaze to her, though he kept brushing. "You find this amusing, I take it."
"No, indeed," she said lightly. "What I find amusing is the idea of a Bow Street Runner taking a valet on his travels. Any decent valet would bemoan the damage to your hat every time someone took a shot at you. That could get annoying."
A smile tugged at his lips. "Perhaps a trifle, yes."
"And just imagine how he would despair over the effect that wind has on your cravat. Not to mention how gunpowder might stain your shirt cuffs."
He chuckled, then seemed to catch himself and turn pensive again. Setting his boots down, he fixed her with an earnest stare. "All joking aside, I should tell you that my daily life differs little from my traveling life."
"Oh?" she said, determined to keep the conversation light. "Cheapside must be quite poverty-stricken. You sleep on bug-ridden mattresses and eat poor meals every day, do you?"
He eyed her askance. "What I mean is, I have to fend for myself most of the time, not only when I travel, but at home. No one stokes up the fire before I rise or trims my quills or makes fanciful creatures out of sugar paste to decorate my birthday cakes. My few servants-"
"Ah, so you do have servants. I began to wonder how you had time to be a Bow Street Runner when you must always be washing your own clothes, cooking your own food, and possibly even constructing your own cabinets and weaving your own rugs."
He glowered at her. "This is all a joke to you."
"Oh, no," she said, turning as sober as he. "Not in the least. So tell me, do you have servants?"
"Yes," he bit out. "A maid-of-all-work, a cook, and a footboy."
"And a coachman?"
"I hire one for trips. Why?"
"I was remembering that you used your own equipage to transport Gabe and Minerva to Burton for Gran last spring."
A muscle worked in his jaw. "I do own a small traveling coach that I keep at a livery," he said almost defensively. "It was my uncle"s. But in London, I travel by horse or hackney. Or I walk."
"I"m a grand walker myself," she said defiantly.
A snort escaped him. "Is that why you rode Lady Bell a mile to go shooting?" He strode over to finish packing up the saddlebags.
She frowned. "I had my lunch and my smock and gun kit and a pair of dueling pistols in my saddlebags, in addition to the rifle stuck in a saddle holster. So no, I didn"t attempt to carry it all a mile."
"My point is..."
"I know what your point is. That you don"t live as well as my family does. That being your wife will mean giving up some things." She stared him down. "I don"t care." There. Let him weasel out of that one.
"You say that now, but you"ve never had to live without a hundred servants, meals prepared by a French cook and served on silver and china, and all of it in the confines of either a very s.p.a.cious London town house or a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-room mansion."
"Well, I can hardly deny that," she said, her temper rising. "But it doesn"t mean I"m incapable of doing without it all."
Taking her chemise from where he"d apparently hooked it by the fire the night before, he walked up to the bed and handed it to her. "You"ve never had to make do with only a couple of shifts and a small a.s.sortment of gowns. You"re used to expensive jewelry, to silk and satin, with lace dripping from every delicate thing you own."
"Your aunt was wearing lace in that portrait," she pointed out. "And I would guess that her bonnet cost nearly as much as mine."
"Perhaps, but it"s her Sunday best." He gestured to Celia"s bonnet with a jerk of his hand. "That is what you wore to go shooting. You wouldn"t even wear it to ride to town, I daresay."
The fact that he was right didn"t mitigate her temper any. "What is the point of this lecture, Jackson? Have you changed your mind about marrying me?"
"No!" The vehemence in that one word soothed her hurt a little. He ran his fingers through his hair, then softened his tone. "Of course I want to marry you. I just want to make sure that you know what you"re getting into."
Leaving the bed, she drew on her chemise, then began to dress. "You seem to forget that once we marry, I"ll inherit a fortune. Granted, it won"t buy a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-room mansion, but it ought to make us tolerably comfortable. And when you become Chief Magistrate-"
"That appointment is by no means certain." His eyes darkened as she wriggled into her drawers. "As for your fortune, I ... um ... there"s..."
His voice trailed off as she sat down on the bed and pulled on one stocking, then tied her garter around it. She noticed how his gaze fixed on the bit of thigh she let show above the garter. In a burst of defiance, she donned her other stocking with excruciating slowness. Might as well remind him how they had come to this pa.s.s in the first place.
When his breath sharpened and he flexed his hands at his sides as if resisting the urge to grab her and kiss her senseless, she reveled in it.
"Yes? You were saying?" she taunted him. "Something about my fortune?"
His gaze snapped to her face, then turned stormy. "That is by no means certain either."
"Why not?"
He pulled on his own clothes with jerky movements that betrayed his agitation almost as much as did the bulge in his drawers. "Your grandmother might not approve of the marriage. She might decide not to give you your portion."
"Don"t be ridiculous. Gran would never do such a thing." She stood to don her corset. "Her rule was that we had to marry, and she made it quite clear that she didn"t care whom we married as long as we did so within the year."