Midnight in Austenland (Austenland 2)

Why couldn’t she speak like a human being with this man? It was easier when she wasn’t looking at him. His gaze made her feel naked.

Mr. Mallery pulled his horse short. “Look,” he said, pointing.

A red fox sat on a fallen tree. It stared back, its tail swished once, then it turned and loped off.

“Do you hunt them?” Charlotte asked.

“It is a gentleman’s sport. If left alone, foxes breed like rabbits and make their own use of chickens.”

“But they look so smart. How can you kill something that looks as if it knows you and what you want to do?”

“My conscience is clear. Ridding the countryside of foxes is a boon to the Wattlesbrooks’ tenant farmers.”

He probably didn’t really kill foxes. He probably was just speaking as Mr. Mallery the character. She told herself this but didn’t believe it, because she couldn’t imagine that Mr. Mallery was anyone but who he seemed.

“You bewitch me when you go silent, Mrs. Cordial,” he said.

Even when he said stuff like that? And looked at her like that?

“Is it too much? Am I too forward to desire an intimacy with your thoughts?” he said. “I wish you would speak, and jealously, I wish you would speak only to me.”

“I don’t think my thoughts are interesting enough to repeat.”

The corner of his mouth ticked up. “I doubt that.”

“Well, I was wondering who you really are.”

“I am as you see me. I am not a man given to artifice. I am Thomas Mallery.”

“Nephew of the Wattlesbrooks.”

He inclined his head. “Though my estate is in Sussex, this land is a second home to me. I spent many holidays here, exploring the grounds, the house. I know Pembrook Park better than any, I believe. No matter that my grandfather lost the deed to his brother. In ways the law cannot understand, she belongs to me.”

There was such conviction in his voice that Charlotte wondered if he sincerely felt that way, but about Windy Nook. From the photos she’d seen at the inn, he’d been in that cast for ten years.

“I wonder about you as well, Mrs. Cordial. Sometimes at night, I do not sleep for wondering.”

Why did this make her blush? How could she have a genuine, uncontrollable physical reaction to a line from an actor? She laughed at herself

, and at him too.

“Clearly we’re thinking too much about each other! But now you must ask me what you’re wondering about.”

His lips held a slight smile. “I dare not ask, or you would call me no gentleman. Yet I do not mind the mystery. I will enjoy uncovering you, layer by layer.”

Again with the blushing. Even if her head knew she was really Charlotte Constance Kinder playing dress-up, her cheeks bought into the whole deal. Naughty cheeks.

Mr. Mallery looked over the scene. “Dismount and come sit with me.”

“I think I’d rather keep riding.”

He raised an eyebrow as if curious why but nicked his mount with his heel and moved forward.

Why was she still afraid? Come on, Charlotte, it wasn’t like he was going to murder her or threaten her maidenhead here in this sequestered, dark, fox-infested wood. He was an actor, and there were Regency rules of etiquette to be adhered to, my lady!

But she rode on. And briefly imagined what might have happened if they’d stopped. Briefly.

They traveled to the inn, where Charlotte dismounted.