Part 14 (1/2)

”Yes, thank you.” Relieved to have a moment to compose herself, Elizabeth arose and went to the stove, but her eyes blurred with tears as she blindly filled a mug with freshly brewed coffee. She brought it over to him, then sat down again.

Sliding a glance at the defeated girl sitting with her head bent and her hands folded in her lap, Ian felt a compulsive urge to either laugh or comfort her; but since chewing was requiring such an effort, he couldn't do either. Swallowing the last piece of egg, he finally managed to say, ”That was . . . er . . . quite filling.”

Thinking perhaps he hadn't found it so bad as she had, Elizabeth hesitantly raised her eyes to his. ”I haven't had a great deal of experience with cooking,” she admitted in a small voice. She watched him take a mouthful of coffee, saw his eyes widen with shock-and he began to chew the coffee.

Elizabeth lurched to her feet, squared her shoulders, and said hoa.r.s.ely, ”I always take a stroll after breakfast. Excuse me.”

Still chewing, Ian watched her flee from the house, then he gratefully got rid of the mouthful of coffee grounds.

Chapter 14.

Elizabeth's breakfast had cured Ian's hunger; in fact, the idea of ever eating again made his stomach churn as he started for the barn to check on Mayhem's injury.

He was partway there when he saw her off to the left, sitting on the hillside amid the bluebells, her arms wrapped around her knees, her forehead resting atop them. Even with her hair s.h.i.+ning like newly minted gold in the sun, she looked like a picture of heartbreaking dejection. He started to turn away and leave her to moody privacy; then, with a sigh of irritation, he changed his mind and started down the hill toward her.

A few yards away he realized her shoulders were shaking with sobs, and he frowned in surprise. Obviously there was no point in pretending the meal had been good, so he injected a note of amus.e.m.e.nt into his voice and said, ”I applaud your ingenuity-shooting me yesterday would have been too quick.”

Elizabeth started violently at the sound of his voice. Snapping her head up, she stared off to the left, keeping her tear-streaked face averted from him. ”Did you want something?”

”Dessert?” Ian suggested wryly, leaning slightly forward, trying to see her face. He thought he saw a morose smile touch her lips, and he added, ”I thought we could whip up a batch of cream and put it on the biscuit. Afterward we can take whatever is left, mix it with the leftover eggs, and use it to patch the roof.”

A teary chuckle escaped her, and she drew a shaky breath but still refused to look at him as she said, ”I'm surprised you're being so pleasant about it.”

”There's no sense crying over burnt bacon.”

”I wasn't crying over that,” she said, feeling sheepish and bewildered. A snowy handkerchief appeared before her face, and Elizabeth accepted it, dabbing at her wet cheeks.

”Then why were you crying!”

She gazed straight ahead, her eyes focused on the surrounding hills splashed with bluebells and hawthorn, the handkerchief clenched in her hand. ”I was crying for my own inept.i.tude, and for my inability to control my life,” she admitted.

The word ”inept.i.tude” startled Ian, and it occurred to him that for the shallow little flirt he supposed her to be she had an exceptionally fine vocabulary. She glanced up at him then, and Ian found himself gazing into a pair of green eyes the amazing color of wet leaves. With tears still sparkling on her long russet lashes, her long hair tied back in a girlish bow, and her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s thrusting against the bodice of her gown, she was a picture of alluring innocence and intoxicating sensuality. Ian jerked his gaze from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and said abruptly, ”I'm going to cut some wood so we'll have it for a fire tonight. Afterward I'm going to do some fis.h.i.+ng for our supper. I trust you'll find a way to amuse yourself in the meantime.”

Startled by his sudden brusqueness, Elizabeth nodded and stood up, dimly aware that he did not offer his hand to a.s.sist her. He'd already started to walk away when he turned and added, ”Don't try to clean the house. Jake will be back before evening with women to do that.”

After he left, Elizabeth went into the house, looking for something to do that would divert her mind from her predicament and help use her pent up energy. Deciding the least she could do was to clean up the mess from the meal she'd made, she set to work doing that. As she sc.r.a.ped at the eggs in the blackened skillet she heard the rhythmic sound of an ax splitting wood. Reaching up to push a wisp of hair off her forehead, she glanced out the window and then stared, blus.h.i.+ng. Without a semblance of modesty Ian Thornton was bare to the waist, his bronzed back tapering to narrow hips, his arms and shoulders rippling with thick bunched muscle as he swung the ax in a graceful arc. Elizabeth had never seen a man's bare arms before, let alone an entire naked male torso, and she was shocked and fascinated and appalled that she was looking. Yanking her gaze from the window, she absolutely refused to yield to the heathen temptation of stealing another glance at him. She wondered instead where he had learned to cut wood with such ease and skill. He'd looked so right at Charise's party, so at ease in his beautifully tailored evening clothes, that she'd a.s.sumed he'd spent all his life on the fringes of society, supporting himself with his gambling. Yet he seemed equally at home here in the wilds of Scotland. More so here, she decided. Besides his powerful physique there was a harsh vitality, an invulnerability about him that was perfectly suited to this untamed land.

At that moment she suddenly recalled something she had long ago chosen to forget. She recalled the way he had waltzed with her in the arbor and the effortless grace of his movements. Evidently he had the ability to belong in whatever setting he happened to be in. For some reason that realization was unsettling-either because it made him seem almost admirable, or because it suddenly made her doubt her former ability to judge him correctly. For the first time since that disastrous week that had culminated in a duel, Elizabeth allowed herself to reexamine what had happened between Ian Thornton and herself-not the events, but the causes. Until now, the only way she'd been able to endure her subsequent disgrace was to categorically blame Ian for it, exactly as Robert had done.

Now, having come face to face with him again when she was older and wiser, she couldn't seem to do that anymore. Not even Ian's current unkindness could make her see him as completely at fault for past events anymore.

As she slowly washed a dish she saw herself as she had really been foolish and dangerously infatuated and as guilty as he of breaking the rules.

Determined to be objective, Elizabeth reconsidered her actions and her own culpability two years before. And his. In the first place, she had been foolish beyond words to want so badly to protect him. . . and to be protected by him. At seventeen, when she should have been too frightened to consider meeting him at that cottage, she had only been frightened that she would yield to the irrational, nameless feelings he awakened in her with his voice, his eyes, his touch.

When she should rightfully have been terrified of him. she had only been terrified of herself, of throwing away Robert's future and Havenhurst. And she would have done it, Elizabeth realized bitterly. If she'd spent another day, a few more hours alone with Ian Thornton that weekend, she would have flung caution and reason to the winds and married him. She'd sensed it even then, and so she'd sent for Robert to come for her early.

No, Elizabeth corrected herself, she'd never really been in danger of marrying .Ian. Despite what he'd said two years before about wanting to marry her, marriage was not what he'd intended; he'd admitted that to Robert.

And just when that memory started to make her genuinely angry, she remembered something else that had an oddly calming effect. For the first time in almost two years, Elizabeth recalled the warnings Lucinda had given her before she made her debut. Lucinda had been emphatic that a female must, by her every action, make a gentleman understand that he would be expected to act like a gentleman in her presence. Obviously, Lucinda had realized that although the men Elizabeth was going to meet were technically gentlemen,” their behavior could, on occasion, be ungentlemanly.

Allowing that Lucinda was right on both counts, Elizabeth began to wonder if she wasn't rather to blame for what had happened that weekend. After all, from their first meeting she'd certainly not given Ian the impression she was a proper and prim young lady who expected the highest standards of behavior from him. For one thing, she had asked him to request a dance from her.

Carrying that thought to its conclusion, she began to wonder if Ian hadn't perhaps done what many other socially acceptable ”gentlemen” would have done. He had probably thought her more worldly than she was, and he had wanted a dalliance. If she had been wiser, more worldly, she undoubtedly would have known that and would have been able to act with the amused sophistication he must have expected of her. Now, with the belated understanding of a detached adult, Elizabeth realized that although Ian had not been as socially acceptable as many of the ton's flirts, he had actually behaved no worse than they. She had seen married women flirting at b.a.l.l.s; she'd even inadvertently witnessed a stolen kiss or two, after which the gentleman received nothing worse than a slap on the arm from the lady's fan and a laughing warning that he must behave himself. She smiled at the realization that instead of a slap on the arm for his forwardness, Ian Thornton had gotten a ball from a pistol; she smiled-not with malicious satisfaction this time, but simply because it had a certain amusing irony to it. It also occurred to her that she might have survived the entire weekend with nothing worse than a mildly painful case of lingering infatuation for Ian Thornton-if only she hadn't been seen with him in the greenhouse.

In retrospect it seemed that her own naivete was to blame for much of what had happened.

Somehow, all that made her feel better than she had in a very long time; it diffused the helpless anger that had been festering inside of her for nearly two years and left her feeling unburdened and almost weightless.

Elizabeth picked up a towel, then stood still, wondering if she was simply making excuses for the man. But why would she? she thought as she slowly dried the earthenware dishes. The answer was that she simply had more problems at the moment than she could deal with, and by ridding herself of her animosity for Ian Thornton she'd feel better able to cope. That seemed so sensible and so likely that Elizabeth decided it must be true.

When everything had been dried and put away she emptied the pan of water outside, then wandered about the house, looking for something to do that would divert her mind. She went upstairs, unpacked her writing things, and brought them down to the kitchen table to write to Alexandra, but after a few minutes she was too restless to continue. It was so lovely outdoors, and from the silence she knew Ian had finished cutting wood. Putting down her quill, she wandered outside, visited with the horse in the barn, and finally decided to attack the large patch of weeds and struggling flowers at the rear of the cottage that had once been a garden. She went back into the cottage, found an old pair of men's gloves and a towel to kneel upon, and went back outside.

With ruthless determination Elizabeth yanked out the weeds that were choking some brave little heartsease struggling for air and light. By the time the sun started its lazy descent she had cleared the worst of the weeds and dug up some bluebells, transplanting them to the garden in neat rows, to give the best show of color in the future.

Occasionally she paused with her spade in hand and looked down into the valley below, where a thin ribbon of sparkling blue wound through the trees. Sometimes she saw a flash of movement-his arm, as he cast his line. Other times he simply stood there, his legs braced slightly apart. ;; gazing up at the cliffs to the north.

It was late afternoon, and she was sitting back on her c heels, studying the effect of the bluebells she'd transplanted. Beside her was a small pile of compost she'd mixed using decayed leaves and the coffee grounds of the morning. ”There now,” she said to the flowers in an encouraging tone, ”you have food and air. You'll be very happy and pretty in no time.”

”Are you talking to the flowers?” Ian asked from behind her. Elizabeth started and turned around on an embarra.s.sed laugh. ”They like it when I talk to them.” Knowing how peculiar that sounded, she reinforced it by adding, ”our gardener used to say all living things need affection, and that includes flowers.” Turning back to the garden, she shoveled the last of the compost around the Bowers, then she stood up and brushed off her hands. Her earlier ruminations about him had abolished so much of her antagonism that as she looked at him now she was able to regard him with perfect equanimity. It occurred to her, though, that it must seem odd to him that a guest was rooting about in his garden like a menial. ”I hope you don't mind,” she said, nodding toward the garden, ”but the flowers couldn't breathe with so many weeds choking them. They were crying out for a little room and sustenance.”

An indescribable expression flashed across his face. ”You heard them?”

”Of course not,” Elizabeth said with a chuckle. ”But I did take the liberty of fixing a special meal-well, compost, actually-for them. It won't help them very much this year, but next year I think they'll be much happier. . . .”

She trailed off, belatedly noticing the worried look he gave the flowers when she mentioned fixing them ”a meal.” ”You needn't look as if you expect them to collapse at my feet,” she admonished, laughing. ”They'll fare far better with their meal than we did with ours. I am a much better gardener than I am a cook.”

Ian jerked his gaze from the flowers, then looked at her with an odd, contemplative expression. ”I think I'll go inside and clean up.” She walked away without looking back, and so she did not see Ian Thornton turn halfway around to watch her.

Stopping to fill a pitcher with the hot water she'd been heating on the stove, Elizabeth carried it upstairs, then made four more trips until she had enough water to use to bathe and wash her hair. Yesterday's travel and today's work in the garden had combined to make her feel positively grimy.

An hour later, her hair still damp, she put on a simple peach gown with short puffed sleeves and a narrow peach ribbon at the high waist. Sitting on the bed, she brushed her hair slowly, letting it dry, while she reflected with some amus.e.m.e.nt on how ill-suited her clothes were for this cottage in Scotland. When her hair was dry she stood at the mirror, gathering the ma.s.s at her nape, then shoving it high into a haphazard chignon she knew would come unbound in only the slightest breeze. With a light shrug she let go of it, and it fell over her shoulders; she decided to leave it that way. Her mood was still bright and cheerful, and she was inwardly convinced it might stay that way from now on.

Ian had started toward the back door with a blanket in his hand when Elizabeth came downstairs. ”Since they aren't back yet,” he said, ”I thought we might as well eat something. We have cheese and bread outside.”

He'd changed into a clean white s.h.i.+rt and fawn breeches, and as she followed him outside she saw that his dark hair was still damp at the nape.

Outside he spread a blanket on the gra.s.s, and she sat down on one side of it, gazing out across the hills. ”What time do you suppose it is?” she asked several minutes after he'd sat down beside her.

”Around four, I imagine.”

”Shouldn't they be back by now?”

”They probably had difficulty finding women who were willing to leave their own homes and come up here to work.”

Elizabeth nodded and lost herself in the splendor of the view spread out before them. The cottage was situated on the back edge of a plateau, and where the backyard ended the plateau sloped sharply downward to a valley where a stream meandered among the trees. Surrounding the valley in the distance on all three sides were hills piled on top of one another, carpeted with wildflowers. The view was so beautiful, so wild and verdant, that Elizabeth sat for a long while, enthralled and strangely at peace. Finally a thought intruded, and she cast a worried look at him. ”Did you catch any fish?”