The Courtship (Sherbrooke Brides 5)

“You will stop trying to enrage me. This so-called memory lapse of yours is laughable. When I take a woman, she never forgets it. Never. If I ever take a woman three times, her life changes utterly.”

Curse her all the way to China, she laughed. She looked over at him and laughed. He pulsed with rage.

Then, suddenly, she stopped her laughter and looked all sorts of bored, even indifferent. She looked down at her tan leather riding gloves that had Eleanor’s reins wrapped loosely around them, looked down at her black riding boots that could have been polished to a brighter shine, but she didn’t have a valet like Nettle, so what was she to do? She looked all too ready to continue with her show of bored indifferen

ce.

He was ready to leap off Luther’s back and take her to the ground and—his mind balked at what followed then. She turned to look at him again and said in an unruffled, calm voice that reeked of martyred female patience, of which there was no other kind in his experience, “There is no need for you to sulk, Lord Beecham. You should learn how to control your wounded male vanity.”

“Damn you, my name is Spenser.”

“Very well, Spenser, I will use your given name until you behave like an ass—again.”

“Helen, do you want me to throw you to the ground and show you yet again that my taking you—three times, mind you—was one of the greatest experiences in your damned provincial life?”

“Goodness,” she said, shaking her head at him, her tranquil self still firmly in place, and rubbing his nose in it, “you certainly have an exalted opinion of yourself, Lord Beecham. I wish that you would simply forget all that nonsense of yesterday and strive to remember that you are my partner, not my lover.”

“I want to be both. I am both. There is no reason to discontinue either one or the other, particularly the other. I want to continue what we started. I regret that you were struck on the head by some falling roof, that you were wet through to your bones, that the rotted wooden floor wasn’t quite as comfortable as a bed, but all of that aside, regardless, you enjoyed yourself immensely. Three times. And I was the man to give you all that pleasure.”

“Yes, I did, and so you were. So what?”

So what? He could but stare at her, his brain at half-mast. No woman had ever said that to him in his male adult life.

So what? She had actually said so what?

He was primed to yell. He stopped himself. He drew a deep, steadying breath. He even smiled at her as he said, “That was quite amusing. What do you mean, ‘So what’?”

“I mean, sir, that yesterday afternoon was a very short amount of time when one but considers the possible age of the universe, for example. It was barely a spit in the ocean of time.

“You and I are involved, sir, but not in a trivial sort of enterprise. We, sir, are involved in a mystical quest. We were only temporarily derailed because of the weather. The weather is lovely this morning so there is nothing else to distract us.

“Pay attention to the road, Lord Beecham. Luther has an eye on that delicious thick goosegrass over there.”

“Luther,” he said very quietly to his horse, “you will not act like a bloody woman and hare off on your own, particularly with me on your back.”

His horse snorted and Helen laughed.

There were times when a man had no other viable choice but to cozy up to defeat. Lord Beecham cozied up for the remainder of their ride to Dereham.

Vicar Lockleer Gilliam, a distinguished gentleman of fine parts who was also a father of two grown children and a widower pursued by every unmarried lady over forty years of age in his flock, ducked his head into his own small study, which currently housed his brother’s manuscripts and books, a nobleman who had studied at Oxford with his brother, and Miss Helen Mayberry, a strapping young woman he would have courted with all the passion in his soul if only she had not been only eight years old twenty years before.

Lord Beecham and Miss Helen Mayberry were both absorbed in what they were doing—namely, poring over those old parchments, mainly shaking their heads because they had not yet succeeded in finding what they were searching for. Dust had formed a light sun-streaked film in the air.

Helen was on her knees in front of a huge parchment manuscript spread out on the lovely Flemish carpet given to the vicar by Lady Winfred Althorpe, who was now, thankfully, remarried. “This isn’t it,” she said. “It’s close, but not close enough.”

Lord Beecham looked over. “Yes, it is close. It’s Aramaic.”

“A cup of tea, my dear?”

“That would be marvelous, Mr. Gilliam,” she said, blinking up at him. “You are very kind. Oh, dear, look at all the dust we’ve raised in here.”

He waved her back when she started to get up. “No, you two remain doing what you’re doing. I will see Cook about the tea.”

Thirty minutes later, their empty teacups set aside, Lord Beecham shouted, “I’ve got it, Helen. Eureka, I’ve got it!”

She was on her feet in an instant. He was bending over the vicar’s desk, a very old vellum book open in front of him.

“What is it?”