Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“ H ow is Hester?” Leo asked as they strolled along the sun-warmed wall of the gardens, all that remained of the once-magnificent Basing House.

She seemed always to be walking in gardens with him these days, Lillian thought. And here in Basingstoke, a day’s coach ride away from London, there was no one to observe and report to Aunt Giles or his mother or the London gossips just how the supposedly affianced Mr. Westrop and Miss Gower were conducting themselves. They were Adam and Eve again, the first couple, granted paradise and nothing to do but enjoy it.

“Hester is well now. I thank God we arrived when we did, and Bacon did not have time to…press his case any further. It helps that you have given us a day of pause in our travels. Too much time in a coach makes her sick to her stomach.”

“I’m willing to do whatever you ask, Lillian. You need only say it.” He squeezed her hand gently against his side.

Lillian bobbed her head, speechless. Her pleasure at his admission—and the use of her name—plunged through her like a stray bolt of sun disappearing behind the gathering clouds.

She had begun, in her heart, calling him Leo. Because he was no longer the stern, distant Mr. Westrop, presumed heir to a marquess, who stood on a pedestal too far away for her to reach. He was the man who’d brought her lists of printers and smoothed her way to meet Mr. Karim. He was the man who, like a god of war, had chased Bacon from the house for terrorizing Hester.

He was the man who reached out to catch her when he thought her falling off a ladder in her uncle’s library. Who had snaked a surreptitious arm around her as their wherry whisked along the Thames, as if he would keep her from tumbling over the side.

He had reached for her, at the risk of his own safety, when his horse reared and upset the curricle. She’d never felt as safe and whole, as secure and grounded, as she did in his arms. When he’d kissed her in the Physic Garden he’d made her world rise and fly apart into pieces, then settle and reform around a new want. A new dream. A new passion.

For him.

“Did her mother show any remorse?” Leo asked.

They strolled along the red brick wall holding back the tangle that Basing House garden had become when its masters withdrew. Lillian had given up trying to identify any of the plants. The only living things about them were the browsing sheep that kept the grass cropped around the ruins, and the occasional shrub that dared poke up across land that had once held one of the grandest homes in England.

Hester stood a short distance away atop the old ringwork, a banked wall of dirt and grass once the foundation of the castle. She held her hat against the wind and gazed down into the interior plain, a figure slender, determined, and alone.

Lillian felt a bit guilty that she had Leo’s arm. It felt natural to be linked to him. Worse: she wanted to touch him. It didn’t feel, here, like they were playacting on a stage. It felt like they might be any visiting party taking in the local sights.

It felt like this—the two of them together—might be something real.

A dangerous yearning, yet it didn’t feel imprudent, this wish to confide in him. She’d never, besides Hester and the occasional friend, had someone who listened to her.

“Aunt spent the day before our departure scolding me for being impetuous and thick-headed, and for putting Hester at risk. I am, by turns, flighty, foolish, hasty, overnice, too quick to perceive a slight, and too dull to perceive the advantages of a situation.” She glanced at him. “How, I ask you, can I be too quick and too dull at the same time?”

His jaw boasted a slight shadow, and a trace of red where he’d nicked himself shaving. Underneath his broad, flat black hat, with the brim jauntily rolled up on one side, his hair gleamed russet brown. He was both casually appealing and a blow to the senses, and it was becoming harder to steel herself against the effect he had on her.

He was not a large man, but he had an air of quiet command that drew respect. The landlord at the Angel Inn in Basingstoke tripped over himself to give Mr. Westrop the best accommodations, and to determine whether they would be staying long enough to attend a dance. A Westrop in his assembly rooms was something the landlord could brag about for months.

He was an easy companion in travel, too. They’d departed the previous morning from the Swan with Two Necks in Cheapside, their hastily packed luggage loaded on the rack and an antiquated post boy mounted on the near horse of the pair pulling their hired chaise. Whatever flurry Lillian had been in to prepare, Leo had had double the arrangements to make, for he had to finish the packing for his expedition and dispatch everything north.

He’d told her, as the yellow post chaise rattled along the turnpike, about his stroke of good fortune in discovering a second-in-command in the form of Augustus’s father. The man had extensive digging experience and was willing to uproot the entire family at a moment’s notice. Leo would deposit Lillian and Hester in Amesbury, then travel to Berkshire to meet his baggage train and crew and pursue the excavations he’d been planning for years.

He would have his dream, and she would have—the memory of him.

“I think you are neither,” Leo decided, watching Hester dally along the rim of the ringwork.

“Not quick?”

“Not overquick to judge.” His eyes appeared green, as if he had absorbed the colors of the countryside. “And you are certainly not too dull to comprehend what your aunt is about. She wants Hester married, and she thinks status will cover a great many personal failings in a husband.”

Others might see his power, but Lillian had come to see his softness. The humor in the lips that had pressed against hers. The indent that appeared between his thick brows when something troubled him. The bleakness in his eyes as he spoke of his father and the low opinion the rest of his family held of him, as his father’s son.

He was doing her a favor, like the gentleman he was—a man with a greater sense of nobility and integrity than most—but she would not confuse that with esteem for her. He thought of her as a convenience; that was why he had proposed extending their false engagement. She could still be his shield.

Which is why she’d declined. Best to make the cut fast, clean and sharp, and let the wound begin to heal.

Yet here they were. Exploring a site of vanished ruins, something between companions and friends. When the landlady had listed ways they could entertain themselves for the day, it hadn’t taken but a moment for Lillian and Leo to agree they both wanted to see the site of Basing House, destroyed in the Civil War. Ruins and history drew them both—another element they held in common. Another gossamer tie that bound them.

“I do know Aunt has set herself against me now. But I cannot let her force Hex to marry someone odious,” Lillian reflected.

But if she were Hester’s self-appointed guardian, that changed Lillian’s vague plans for her own future. She needed to think, and it was difficult to remain logical with handsome Leo Westrop pulling her thoughts toward him, like a flower turning toward the sun.

“What will your parents say when we descend upon them?” he asked.

“That it is predictable of me to act rashly, and I have always been a vexation to my aunt.” She pursed her lips. “That I am ever reacting out of emotion, without thinking through the consequences, but they love me despite my silliness.”

Leo’s gaze held surprise. “You are not silly .”

His firm declaration warmed her belly as if she’d eaten spicy food. “You do not agree it is a bit fanciful to spend one’s days sketching a flower, and devote one’s resources to publishing a book about a single family of plants?”

“Recall your audience, if you please. Many think it absurd, even morbid, to go poking about lumps of earth.” He swept out a hand to indicate the quiet green expanse around them.

His heat against her body was having a strange effect. Her blood had turned sluggish, her mind a haze of mist. Was she falling ill?

“It’s hard to imagine that, just over a century ago, one of England’s grandest homes stood here,” Lillian remarked. “Now there is nothing left but the gatehouse, a barn, and those earthworks that Hex finds so fascinating.”

“The Marquess of Winchester took pride in building a palace as grand as Hampton Court,” Leo said. “He played host to Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, which was no doubt a strain on a man even as rich as he was. But Winchester was a Royalist, and when Cromwell’s troops took him after a great siege during the war, they left nothing behind of the house. I expect the villagers helped, carrying away the bricks and furnishings to supply their own homes.”

“What happened to the marquess?”

“Tossed in jail, though pardoned before he could be executed for a traitor. His heir, now the Duke of Bolton, packed up and moved to Hackworth, a short distance away. The locals tell me he has impressive gardens, likely in better shape than these. We could go see them, if you’d like.”

“Perhaps the nephew of a marquess might go about knocking on a duke’s doors,” Lillian said. “The niece of a Welsh baronet will inquire when the house is open to the public, and pay the housekeeper a tip for a peek inside.”

“You could marry high.” Leo patted her hand. “You could be a duchess opening her door to the curious masses on public days.”

“Have the marquesses of Waringford ever been considered for a dukedom?” she asked, intending to deflect fruitless talk of marriage. “It seems the next step.”

He tightened his hold on her arm. “Are you asking if I might make you a duchess, Miss Gower? That seems awfully ambitious of you.”

She lifted her chin at his teasing tone. “A wise girl knows her prospects before she submits to the shackle.”

“Touché. To answer your question, the recent lords Waringford have done nothing to distinguish themselves. They rose to the title the same time Bolton did, and for the same reason—supporting William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution. But my grandsire’s single accomplishment was convincing an heiress to be his bride, and my uncle followed in those footsteps.”

“You would have a great deal of influence, were you to become the marquess.” Lillian didn’t have to think about measuring her pace to keep step with him; they seemed to fall naturally into a rhythm, and when they reached the end of the garden wall, they turned as if they were a pair of horses who had been sharing the harness for years. “You would have a vote in the House of Lords. You would have livings to dispense, and appointments to make, and influence over members of Parliament. Your voice could add weight to any number of causes.”

“Causes which are more worthy of my time, instead of digging about in the dirt with my nasty old tombs?”

She startled at the bitter edge in his tone. “And now I sound just like your mother, don’t I? I only mean to say, as Waringford, you should have as much liberty as you like. You could have a place in the Society of Antiquaries and influence in government. If you wished.”

They walked in quiet for a moment. Clouds fringed the horizon, threatening a gloomy dusk later, but the golden glow of late afternoon light broke through. The breeze carried the scent of loamy earth and grasses. A yellowhammer landed on the wall, voicing its rhythmic chirp, tail twitching. Lillian wondered if the bird had a nest nearby.

The business was so easy for birds and animals. One spent one’s days foraging for food and finding shelter. When the time was right, one courted a partner, or let oneself be courted. One built a home and raised offspring. A simple, natural rhythm, as old as life itself.

She felt free, too, in this open space, in this meadow waving with blooms of campion and chicory. This could almost be a courtship as they walked together, learned about, confided in one another.

“The marquess, my uncle, thinks the hot blood of the Westrops must have failed in me and my brother,” Leo said after a while. “He suggested my father spent all his vitality in his romps and pranks, leaving nothing to his sons. The whole family thinks I am both staid and fickle, at the same time, because I tried so many careers, and settled on one so unpromising. Even my mother’s family has a low opinion of me—she is the daughter of an earl, as she will be the first to tell you. They wish me to be better. More like Rupert and less like…”

“Less like what?” she asked softly.

He rubbed his free hand along his jaw, then gestured into the air. “Do you know how many artifacts lie here about Basingstoke? There’s Winklebury Ring, a hillfort built before the Romans came. A long barrow near Down Grange that’s never been investigated. The town’s been a wool market for centuries, and the old Roman road passed close by. But there’s an even older track just south of town, they call it Harrow Way, which likely carried on the tin trade since prehistoric times. The Greeks wrote about it.”

Lillian watched a blackcock and his greyhen pace through the tall grass edging the wall, the male keeping an eye on them from beneath his red brow. The greyhen tucked after her more splendid companion, content to be under his direction, submit to his whims.

“That is what interests me,” Leo said finally. “Learning that history. It seems important to know. To get a longer view of the time we live in.” He gave her a searching glance. “What will you do, once we have joined your parents?”

“I—I suppose I will join in their excavation. Endeavor to make myself useful.” As she always did.

He smiled, the corners of his mouth lifting in a way that lifted the corners of her stomach, as if the two were connected somehow.

“I look forward to meeting your parents. I imagine I could learn much from them.”

There was something stiff in those words, something guarded. As if he sensed she meant to push, he deflected. “You are always attentive to the needs of others, Lillian. What is it you want for yourself?”

“What do you mean, what do I want?”

The question shook her. Lillian was often called upon to decide for others: the black lace cap or the bonnet to make calls, which wine to serve at dinner, which maid to hire for her uncle’s home or her father’s, which trunk to pack the trowels and brushes.

She was very seldom consulted on what she wanted for herself.

She felt her pocket, where she had stashed her sketchbook and a crayon for sketching. A nebulous hope was taking shape, and she dared not peer too closely at a new desire she would only be denied. Lillian wasn’t Leo’s pair, or his mate. It wasn’t simple for them, like the birds.

“I want my parents to be happy, for Hester to be safe, for my publication to be well received. I suppose I simply want more of what I have already. But also…” She debated revealing so much. He had already removed, or seen through, so many of the glass panes set up around her heart.

“I want what you want, I suppose. To learn about what interests me and share that knowledge. Help others see the beauty all about us. And feel—oh, it sounds so silly to say it, but in the end—I want to have done something that matters.”

He lifted his brows, those dark, thick brows that could make him seem so intimidating, and his eyes gleamed with the last peek of sun. The breeze stirred the hairs at the back of her neck.

“I do not mean to suggest that caring for others doesn’t matter,” she hurried to say. “That is perhaps the greatest contribution any one person can make. But I wish for what you said—to add to our knowledge about the world.”

He watched her, and his face held an expression she couldn’t decipher. The line of his lashes darkened his eyes and his mouth quirked on one side.

“There is something else I want,” he murmured.

The low rumble of his voice scattered her breath. “What?”

He tugged her arm, and Lillian followed him around the far corner of the garden, out of the breeze, and out of sight of Hester. Valerian and betony drifted to her nose. Her heart seesawed, alarm and breathless hope in equal measure.

He slid his fingers along her jaw, palm cupping her neck, thumb grazing the curve of her ear. Thought buzzed away like the bees on the flowers.

“I want to kiss you again.”

“Oh.” She peered up at him, her blood forming lazy, hot pools beneath her skin. It was the open air making her so bold, the intoxicating scent of wildflowers swishing around her skirts. And the sense that if she did not seize this moment and kiss Leo Westrop, she might never have the chance to touch him again.

“Very well.”

His lips were smiling as they descended to hers, which she turned up to him in eager greeting. He tasted as delicious as last time, mint and a hint of spice. The heat of his mouth called up a craving she hadn’t known she carried, a hunger for his particular sweetness. A soft moan escaped her and disappeared on his lips as he savored, caressed, stroked. Then his tongue dove into her mouth and she fell into him, into the kiss, as if tumbling into a deep pool.

Shivers danced up her spine as his hand slid around her waist, stroking the small of her back. Her legs turned to flower stems, barely able to hold her upright. His other hand cupped her head, angling her mouth open for his plundering. Waves of dizzy heat circled down through her body, and she fastened her fingers to the lapels of his coat, delirious. Westrop. Leo . Kissing her. Kissing her as if he’d been hungry for her, famished.

She leaned against the wall behind her, as firm as the plane of his chest. He danced his tongue with hers and she rose to meet him like a cloud of heat and air and sun.

She tugged at his collar, another small whimper escaping her throat. Her breasts ached when he slid a hand up her waist and cupped his hand over one. Her nipple puckered inside her stays. A tension she’d never known sprang up between her breast and the space between her legs, like the string in a pianoforte, thick and vibrating. She felt wanton and abandoned and thrilled. Leo was touching her.

“Hell’s teeth, Lillian,” he groaned against her mouth. “I’ve dreamed of this.”

His hand against her breast, cupping, stroking, made her delirium rise, an enchanted fog that furled around them both. She drew his tongue deeply into her mouth, wanting more touch, more sensation, more of him.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, Leo.” His name on her tongue was a delicious sweet, as delicious as the heat of his mouth. She wanted to kiss him for days.

She sucked on his tongue, trying to pull him inside of her, and he answered her call, lowering his body against hers. Her breath whooshed away. She was butter between two slabs of hard bread. He dragged his other hand down her front, sweeping her collarbones, squeezing her breast, sliding to her waist and then her rear. With a firm hand on her bottom he hitched her hips toward him and her mind staggered, reeled, at the invasion, the fullness, the hardness, the?—

Oh .

He stilled with her and lifted his head. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, his mouth gleaming with damp from her mouth.

“I hurt you?” His words were ragged, a hint of wildness. As if he were groping for a thread of control, of sense, just as she was. Her heart sang that they were in this together, both equally lost, and yet—his body was heavy against hers. A warning.

“No,” she muttered.

“Too much. Too soon. I’ve—” He stammered, his fingers slackening, releasing her, and she sensed him about to move away. If he did, the beautiful, soaring feeling would be lost, and she would plummet to earth. She curled her hands in the fabric of his coat and held tight.

“You’re perfect. I want this. To feel you.” She spoke as if she had a fever, the words hot and rushed. “Only—it’s different this time.”

A shadow moved in his eyes, and his hand on her bottom flexed, as if he’d taken a blow. “You’ve been with someone else.”

“No.” She pressed her face into his neck, hiding the sting of humiliation. Wishing she could wash it all away in the clean sweep of his scent, in the heady goodness he made her feel.

“There was…” She licked her lips. “A boy, once. One summer, on a dig with my parents. I was young. He was a bit older. He…liked to touch me.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I thought I was in love.”

Leo turned his face toward hers, his cheek brushing her cheek. He freed one hand to stroke her hair. “He hurt you?”

“No. It was…” She breathed hard, the images sharp against her eyelids, as painful as they had been those years ago when she realized the way of it. His rubbing, his groping, his squeezing, his heavy breath—he’d been using her body for his pleasure. A tool, no more than a warm object for him to press himself against. A fabric pillow. A sheep.

“It was like it didn’t matter that it was me ,” she said finally. “I am ashamed of it now.”

His breath ruffled the hair at her temple. “And you fear I will be the same way.”

“No.” The word wisped out of her. She opened her mouth against his neck, giving in to the temptation to taste him. Salty. Warm. A sinful treat.

He drew back his head and sucked in his breath as she licked him. His body pressed against hers, that male part of him against her legs—she felt his hardness through her skirts. Alarming, yet welcome. She nestled closer.

“It is—different with you. Like you are with me. If that makes any sense.”

He touched his mouth to her shoulder, as if he would devour her in turn, yet the thrill was not fear. A flutter of excitement for the unknown.

“I want to be with you,” he murmured. “I’ve dreamed of holding you. Longed for it.”

She’d dreamed the same, she realized now. The reason she’d come awake in the deep of night, her skin tingling, an ache in her belly. She longed for him to be molded to her, just like this.

“What do you want, Lillian?” he whispered.

Him . More of this, the delirium, the flying, the sense that her body had become warm cake batter, ready to sink into any mold. Yet there was caution there, too. They were outside, for heaven’s sake. He was a Westrop, a mighty oak. She was a Gower, a meadow weed. Yet he fit against her. So well. And his mouth?—

“Will you kiss me again?” she asked shyly, skimming her finger along the fold where his neckcloth met his neck. How firm his skin was, how warm, with a scent rising from him like bread ready to take from the oven. She wanted to sink in her teeth.

“I will kiss you for days, darling,” he muttered, and dragged his cheek across hers as he sought her lips. She tipped her mouth up for his onslaught, and the dizzy heat catapulted through her, familiar, a taste she was greedy for. Their mouths danced a rhythm of take and receive, give and hold, a pairing of salty and sweet.

The heat climbed her like ivy, a prickle between her legs, and she shifted her hips, seeking ease. She brushed against his hardness, not his thigh, and that—that was what she wanted. On a gasp, she drew his tongue deeper into her mouth, plunging her hips against him, helpless against the tide that caught her. A bright, hot star appeared at the center of her legs, an apex, and it pulsed when he groaned against her lips.

Her mouth went dry. Her breath stuttered. She didn’t know precisely what she ached for, but she felt hollow, as if she were a window thrown open and she wanted something to fill her. Wind. Light. An answer to the tremorous, treacherous melting of her thighs.

Suddenly Leo froze and straightened, as if he’d been bolt-shot, and Lillian stilled. His hands opened. He lifted his head. Carefully, as if untangling himself from vines, he stepped away, setting her on her feet—she’d been cradled against him, kneading him like a cat. The look on his face was one of pain, and cold washed through her.

“Too much,” he said hoarsely, his eyes glazed as if he’d taken a blow to the head.

“I’m sorry,” she stuttered. “I?—”

“Not here,” he said. It was as if he were having the same trouble stringing words together as she was. She pressed her hands to her cheeks as if she could smooth away her embarrassment. She was too much.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped again.

“No—there’s no reason—it’s not you who should be sorry.” Quickly he dropped a kiss against her lips, in reassurance, or as if he couldn’t help himself. “I’m—I need to stop.”

“Of course.” Her cheeks heated her fingers like an open flame. What a fool she was. Of course he didn’t want to be devoured. She’s been rubbing herself against him like a wanton, using him the way Timkin had excited himself with her. She knew how that felt. She was crass, and careless, and this was Leo , and?—

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not true,” he growled.

“I—it’s not?” He couldn’t know what she was thinking. She couldn’t meet his eyes, instead patting down her redingote as if she could smooth the creases from where she’d been crushed against him. Had crushed herself. She might have brick powder on her back, and how would that look when they returned to the inn?

He brushed his lips across her forehead this time, as if he couldn’t meet her eyes, either. But he gripped his hands to her upper arms and inhaled, as if he were breathing her in, and she went still with wonder, the panic subsiding. Her heart circled a few times, then settled.

“If I keep kissing you, keep touching you,” he whispered, “I’ll spend in my pantaloons, and it will leave a stain, and I do not want to explain that to your cousin or anyone.”

“Spend— oh .” He meant pleasure. What happened to a man in the throes. What Timkin had been striving for, against Lillian’s body, while she stood there embarrassed and wooden, wondering what she was supposed to do.

She hadn’t felt a bit wooden with Leo. She felt as flexible as meadow grass when it sang as the wind moved through.

“Then I suppose we ought to stop,” she said primly, though that bright star pulsing in the unnamable place between her legs throbbed, Don’t stop! Follow this! Finish!

He chuckled and rubbed his hands over her arms, squeezing gently. “I am the sober Westrop, you know.” This time he met her eyes, and his were bright green gray, an open grassland, a yawning moor. “Even more sober than my clerical brother. I am not overset by anything. Especially not a woman.”

“Oh.” What did he mean—he did not like being affected? Would he never touch her again? Never have this, never feel ?—

“You overset me,” he murmured. “But in the very best way.”

“Thank you—I think?”

She’d crushed his neckcloth in pulling him to her, clawing him closer. She made a valiant attempt to neaten the twist. “You overset me as well,” she whispered.

“I would say that is only fair.”

It happened again, the lift of his lips tugging her stomach upward, and she stood staring at him like a little twit, adoration in her eyes.

“But I suppose we should not do this again.” Regret swelled her voice before she could stop it.

He slid one hand down her arm, placed her hand on the crook of his elbow, her chivalrous escort once again, save for the mischief that danced in his eyes. “Oh, I hope we will, Lillian. Not here, but again. Soon. Somewhere better.”

They both turned, and Lillian, still working her way back from the faraway land she’d sailed to, tried not to shriek at the sight of Hester watching them curiously.

“Those are liberties, I suppose? You’re missing out on everything. There are cellars, and old fishponds, and a set of stairs in the ruins,” Hester reported. “And a set of bones or two buried in the dungeons, I don’t doubt. But I should like to see if the barn has bats in it, wouldn’t you? Lil,” she added with some concern, “why is your face so red?”