His wry smile had her heart doing somersaults. “Did you think I was a useless ornament to society?”
No, she didn’t. She’d seen the way he cared for Emilia and fed her animals. She suspected he was impressively competent in everything he did. Including how he touched a woman’s body.
Maggie was blushing again. She hoped to heaven he wouldn’t notice.
This improper situation filled her head with all kinds of improper thoughts. Thoughts she’d never had before.
And the most improper thought of all was that she started to hope it kept snowing into the next century.
Mr. Hale went on, which was a relief. She was having trouble finding her voice. “I work for my living, I’ll have you know. And I’ve had to fend for myself for years.”
“In that case, you don’t need me to run after you.”
He raised his eyes, and at last she saw what color they were. A dark, serpentine green like the sea under a rocky overhang. The erratic breath jammed in her lungs, and she had a strange feeling that she plunged headfirst into that deep green sea. Down. Down. Until she feared she might never come up again.
She waited for him to smile, but he looked deadly serious. “No, I want you here. You, my girl, are not going anywhere.”
Oh, my…
Because heaven forgive her, while her buzzing ears heard every word, her reeling senses heard only three.
I want you.
Chapter 5
Joss waited for Margaret in the snowy yard. He felt on edge, the way he had the very first time he’d asked a girl to take a walk with him. Which was absurd, when then he’d been a stripling of thirteen, and now he was a grown man approaching thirty.
But the same suspense tightened his gut. The same anticipation sharpened his senses.
If he was honest, this was worse. The word at Eton had been that the bandmaster’s daughter was generous with her favors and would kiss any fellow behind the cricket pavilion in exchange for sixpence.
Miss Margaret Carr was made of sterner stuff.
Except this morning for a few tremulous seconds, she hadn’t looked stern at all. Instead she’d looked like a young girl stepping out of the shadows to discover a new world. And even better, she trusted Joss
Hale to show her.
Since leaving her downstairs, he’d wandered the house in a daze. He hadn’t noted a single fine cornice or ill-favored window. Instead he’d seen the soft light entering those perfect blue eyes as she’d watched him kneeling at her feet.
For a few mad moments, he’d wanted to say that he kneeled in worship, not because, much more prosaically, he cleared up a broken plate.
“Will she come, Bob?” he asked the stocky pony he’d harnessed to the cart he’d found in the stables. “Or will she think better of it?”
Bob, an affectionate creature, he’d discovered, butted him with his head and whickered.
“No, I’m not sure either.”
If Margaret deigned to spend the afternoon with Joss, he needed to remember her innocence. Because he couldn’t pretend that he was that unworldly schoolboy. He knew what that soft flush on a lovely face meant. He even knew why she’d dropped the plate.
She wasn’t immune to the attraction flaring between them. If she were, she wouldn’t be nearly so jumpy. But while he might know the steps, this particular dance could only lead her to disaster.
He checked his pocket watch. It wasn’t one o’clock yet. Impatience ate at him. He’d been early for the bandmaster’s daughter, too.
At least the snow had stopped. Although if the weather cleared, honor dictated that he leave Thorncroft Hall and delay his return until this one too beguiling girl had more company.
Joss heard her boots squeak in the snow, and his heart rose as he turned to see her tramping toward him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d found a female so bedazzling.
When had he started to lose his enthusiasm for the chase?