Chapter 17
Anticipation hung in the air as Maddy looked at his outstretched fingers. Taking his hand felt dangerous in a way she couldn’t quite articulate. But she had just confessed all to him, hadn’t she? Somehow, Beau had become a safe place to share some of the most horrible pieces of herself. Her worst memories. And that brought a lightness she hadn’t expected.
Taking a breath, she put her hand in his. As he wrapped his fingers around hers, the feeling of his warm, masculine hands, so foreign and yet so unbelievably right, reached deep inside her. Just like how the sun’s strength would touch her flowers, encouraging them to unfurl their petals.
He led her up the foot path, through the wood, until they reached the clearing. But instead of guiding her back toward the house, he turned in the opposite direction, where the elaborate root system at the base of a fallen tree formed a natural wall. He guided her around it, taking care that she not catch her foot on a root.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, as her curiosity started to get the best of her. The scent of clover filled the air as the wildflowers and grasses danced lazily in the summer breeze. The path underneath their feet was thick with grasses, but alongside she noticed the suggestion of a stone formation, almost like a little ha-ha wall. She was about to point it out to him when he stopped. For a moment, she feared he would let her go, and Maddy could not help the relief that he apparently had no intention of doing so.
“Almost there,” he said, smiling at her with a giddiness she could only recall seeing in the eyes of the Everwell students on Christmas Eve. “In fact, I want you to cover your eyes.”
“Beau da Silva,” Maddy said, not bothering to disguise her incredulity at his request. “Perhaps I have just read too many novels or penny dreadfuls. But going with a strange man into the woods, blindfolded, generally doesn’t work out well for most women.”
“I am hardly a stranger,” he said, putting a hand to his heart with that characteristic flair she was, despite herself, coming to adore. “And what are you reading? Clearly not A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or Snow White.”
Maddy blinked. “I’ve read Snow White—the huntsman is there to cut out her heart.”
“Ah!” he said. “But he doesn’t, does he? You just need to go off into the woods with the right man.”
“And you are the right man?” she asked, unable to stop herself from smiling.
“I hope so,” he said, with an earnestness that at one time she would have felt was out of character, but now understood to be genuine. “Or at least, I hope I’m not the wrong one.”
“No, Beau da Silva,” she said. “You are not the wrong one.”
There was never a moment when Maddy didn’t think that Beau da Silva was handsome. The gods had blessed him with more good looks than seemed fair. She was confident he could have any woman he wanted. But the way his eyes lit up in that moment did something to Maddy she thought impossible. It was as if her good opinion of him mattered more than anything in the world. If he kept looking at her like that, she might be in real danger.
How was it possible that a man’s smile could make her feel this way? So utterly important?
“How about I promise not to try anything dastardly, which, given the fact that I saw you store two throwing knives in your boot this morning, would be a remarkably foolhardy idea,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “Now, cover your eyes. I’ll guide you the next fifteen feet or so, and I promise it will be worth your while.”
“Fine,” she said, ignoring the thrill in her chest she felt at the way he was looking at her—as if her joy was the only thing that mattered to him. She closed her eyes, and then, because that was clearly not enough, she put her hands over them as an extra measure.
“I’m going to lead you up slowly, so you don’t trip,” he said. In a moment, she felt him behind her, one hand at her back, one hand at her elbow. It was peculiar, this sensation. Unfamiliar. She should, frankly, be hating this. She should have felt vulnerable, but the heat of his hand through her clothes, and the subtle warmth of his breath from behind her had the opposite effect.
Of course, she could open her eyes at any moment. He had not bound her in any way. Except, perhaps, that she was spellbound by his playfulness. This desire, almost palpable, to delight her.
Their paced slowed, but with every step, she reached out with her other senses—the smells carried on the breeze, a subtle drop in temperature from where they may be walking in the shadow of trees, and underfoot, the sense that the ground beneath had changed from the uneven but soft ground of the meadow to something harder. Stone, perhaps. Interesting.
Everything about what she was doing seemed wrong. She was here because her job was to have her eyes wide open, looking for the danger lurking in the shadows. But Beau’s intoxicating smile and playful expression had convinced her that this was absolutely safe.
“Nearly there,” he said, whispering in her ear. It was impossible, but she felt like she could almost see his smile.
Maddy felt his hands on her shoulders, and a gentle pressing as he tried to control her steps.
“Can I open my eyes now?” she asked. She wasn’t sure whether to be impatient or excited.
“Almost,” he said. His hands were gone from her body, depriving her of his touch. But she sensed him standing close, and then, almost whispering in her ear, she heard. “Now.”
Maddy dropped her hands and opened her eyes. And blinked.
She’d had no idea what to expect. Perhaps a small clump of columbine, or some other plant in the nearby wood.
Instead, he’d found… heaven.
Beau stood beside her, his chest tight, watching her with the same urgency he’d felt when presenting a new investment opportunity to his father. But there wasn’t thousands of dollars at stake, nor the company’s reputation. Why was he so damned nervous?
“Oooooh!”
It wasn’t a string of words. But the wonder from that single syllable was worth an entire soliloquy.
Madeline Murray didn’t communicate with words. She obviously loved them, given how much she read. But right now, it was the rush of pink flooding her cheeks, and her hands, trembling as she’d covered her mouth, that told him everything he needed to know.
“How did you find this?” she asked as she recovered her voice, even as she studied the riot of tangled vines and overgrown jumbles of flowers.
Quietly, he let out the breath he’d been holding and shrugged his shoulders, as if her good opinion didn’t mean everything to him. “Purely by chance.”
She turned to him, giving him a curious look, before having her attention dragged away by some delicate pink blossom that grew on feather-green branches.
“Did you see this?”
Her voice had a giddy lightness to it that he didn’t recognize. She was gently handling the trumpet shaped blossom, looking at it with the same excitement he’d seen in his father when he’d reviewed a particularly profitable quarter.
He walked over to her.
“It’s a milk and wine lily,” she said as join her. “I’ve never seen it before, except in a book. There are half a dozen species just in this section I’ve never seen anywhere. This is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
She looked at him with such happiness, such gratitude. With joy.
Something tightened in Beau’s throat. When was the last time that anyone had ever gazed at him the way Madeline just did?
“By the looks of things, I don’t think anyone has tended to this for years. Even Hollis hasn’t been here since the days he was with my mother. A storm must have knocked over the tree back there and obscured it from view.”
“Maybe this place held too much meaning for him,” she said. “And it hurt to come back.”
Beau considered that. Hollis had mentioned the garden in an offhand way, and when Beau had questioned him about it, he’d seemed distinctly uninterested in discussing it further.
She paused, putting her nose into another flower, then carefully inspected its leaves. She treated these plants with such tenderness and reverence, Beau was practically jealous.
“This garden was very carefully designed,” she said, walking slowly to negotiate the path, which was obscured in many places by a carpet of vines and overgrown bushes that forced her to duck or push them aside. Rather than be taken aback by the wildness, Miss Murray seemed to revel in it. “It’s overgrown, but you can see there are no straight lines. It allows you to always be discovering what is along the next curve.”
Beau followed, his mind wandering to forbidden places, like the curves of Madeline Murray’s body.
“This must be the garden from your grandparents’ journals,” she said. “How exciting for you.”
It was an unexpectedly difficult question for Beau to answer. His grandparents obviously wanted this to be part of Beau’s life—they’d willed this to him, after all. But he had commitments to the da Silva lumber empire, and even if Frank wasn’t his father, he’d raised Beau and trusted him to run it. After a lifetime of chasing the excitement of the next dollar, the next contract, the next distraction from a life that was wanting something that he couldn’t quite see, couldn’t quite reach, Beau wasn’t sure if he knew what to do if he stopped. Or how empty he would feel if he did.
And then he watched Madeline bending over a clump of plants, her long, red braid draped around the back of her neck, and realized he wasn’t feeling empty at all.
“Your grandparents must have had curious, open minds,” she said after a moment, interrupting his woolgathering.
Beau frowned. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s all around us,” she said, gesturing to the landscape, somehow able to decode the message in the unruly mass of green that surrounded them. “Look at these plants.”
Unlike the family business, which seemed to delight in going into the wild places and leaving destruction in its wake, this little garden was nature run riot. Butterflies and moths flew from one plant to another, unperturbed by the presence of what may have been the first newcomers to their domain in years. Sunshine glinted off the ethereal threads of spider webs. The hum of bees, busy gathering pollen, made the air come alive. It looked like chaos. Beautiful chaos. A garden fit for the faerie queen that stood in its midst.
“I’m looking,” he said. “But I’m not sure what I’m looking at.”
“Here,” she said, holding up a spindly branch between them, beckoning him closer. Beau ducked under the brush, standing next to her. It was the first time since they’d arrived that Madeline Murray seemed at ease. Maybe even happy. And since he’d arrived here—after years of being unable to live up to scratch in the eyes of the men in his family, years of toiling in pursuit of another man’s dream—it was the first time he’d been, too.
“See these?” she said, pushing back an overgrown brush. “These are milkweed. Many people tear them out, because they think they’re weeds, but the butterflies love them. And next to them are Tickseed. They don’t do well in my garden, but being up against this stone probably helped. And these—” She moved past them to a mass of plants with green heart shaped leaves and larger green husks. “I’ve only seen these once before, in a book. They are called winter cherries. You have to be careful with plants. Some can come in and take over, smothering out everything else. That’s what this is, unfortunately. But we could dig it out, I think.”
“We?” Beau asked. “The last time I came near a plant of yours, you nearly took my head off.”
She turned and gave him a sheepish look.
“But these are yours,” she said, holding out her arms, encompassing the magic around her. “This is your magical kingdom, Prince Charming, not mine.”
This was his kingdom. A kingdom that he’d been offered a respectable amount of money to sell.
“I have one more thing to show you,” he said, pushing past the discomfort of an idea that a mere fortnight ago had seemed like the best way to get rid of a property he had no interest in.
“Do I have to close my eyes this time?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Follow me.”
On impulse, he held out his hand again, and she took it without hesitation. He suppressed the thrill and led her past an obelisk, its iron form covered by a crawling ivy. Along the way, she paused to fawn over some blossom or another, or tsk at a planting she may have felt was a mistake. He stood dutifully, trying to pay attention even as he was fixated on the fact that she’d not let go of his hand. Heat wound through Beau’s body, making him hard in all the usual places, while somehow leaving a soft, breezy feeling inside of him. Did she feel the same?
At last, they approached a stone wall, thoroughly covered by a thick verge of creeping roses save for an opening directly ahead. He heard her gasp and smiled as he turned to see her own mouth in a tidy little O.
“I think this section was the rose garden,” he said as they ducked under the canopy of green leaves. “Some of them are more thorns that flowers but?—”
Whatever explanation he had planned to offer—which as far as information was concerned, was very little—stopped as the most unexpected thing happened.
Madeline Murray kissed him.
And it wasn’t just a peck on the cheek, or even a short kiss on the lips owing to some overwrought excitement at seeing a mass of roses in more shades of pink, white, and yellow than he thought possible.
Her lips were on his mouth, pressing hard, her hands on his shoulders, holding herself steady. The sensation of it nearly weakened his knees. She broke the kiss suddenly as she’d initiated it.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” she blurted out, her eyes as wide as saucers. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t—I don’t—” she sputtered, before doing the most uncharacteristic thing he’d seen her do: bury her face in her hands and turn away. “I don’t know how.”
It took a moment to process what she’d said. As a kiss it had been clumsy, but a clumsy kiss from Madeline Murray still lit a fire inside him that went straight down to his nethers. He’d had just a hint of the fire he knew was inside her, and like a man coming in from the cold, he was desperate for more.
And then he had another thought—a thought that twisted inside him. Madeline Murray had never been kissed. Or at least, not by someone who deserved her.
He turned her around, gently pulling her hands from her face.
“Madeline Murray,” he said, tracing her hairline with a touch. “I’m going to kiss you properly, if that is all right with you. You are an extremely intelligent woman, and I’m certain you will be a quick study.”
She nodded, suddenly shy. It was endearing and yet there was something about it that tore at his insides. This beautiful woman, who did not know she was beautiful—cast aside by those who by rights should have cared for her.
He would. He would care for her until his dying day. He didn’t know how to entice her to love him. But he would try.
And he would start with a kiss.
He put his lips to her cheeks first, pressing gently into the soft flesh, tasting the sweetness of her. She sucked in a breath, which encouraged him to plant those kisses lower, along the edge her jaw, down to the tender flesh just below her left ear. Every touch brought a new delight—a little sigh here, a deep breath there. The space between them closed to nothing, and the sensation of her lush bosom against his chest threatened to end him. He hadn’t even found her lips yet, but even through her skirts, she must have felt his arousal.
He pushed away a few stray tendrils of her hair, then placed his lips on hers. He pressed gently at first, waiting for her response. Her lips, sweet as any berry he’d tasted, were soft, and in response to his touch, her mouth opened slightly. He took the invitation. He cupped the back of her head with one hand, his other hand grazing one of her ears, and kissed her lips, trying to be gentle, wanting this to be everything she needed it to be while trying to control his own need to pour every ounce of his longing into her.
Instead, she kissed him back with such a fire that Beau feared on the one hand he would be consumed by her, and on the other, knew he would happily sacrifice himself on that pyre. Just as he’d thought he’d lose himself completely, she broke the kiss.
“I…” she stuttered, breathless, as she stepped away. “I should go.”