Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

Well, then, all was going according to plan, except for the unforeseen to-do at the Falcon Inn. Which she’d quite enjoyed. The look on the bully’s face when she’d slapped him with her glove was priceless.

But then Lisle had come and dragged her away and—

The carriage door opened.

There he stood, looking up at her, a rainbow of colors ringing one silver-grey eye.

“You’d better come in and eat breakfast now,” he said. “We won’t stop to eat again until midday.”

“We?” she said. “You weren’t coming. You would rather live like a pauper in Egypt or die of starvation than yield to your parents. You have decided that journeying to Scotland is a fate worse than death.”

“Traveling with you, it’s going to be even more fateful, I daresay,” he said. “Do you want to eat or not? It’ll be hours before you get another chance.”

“You are not in charge of this journey,” she said.

“Now I am,” he said. “You were determined to make me do this. Now you’ll have to do it my way. Eat or starve, it’s your choice. I’m going to look at the famous bed.”

Leaving the carriage door open, he turned away and sauntered back into the inn.

Olivia burst into the bedchamber ten minutes later.

“You,” she began. But even in one of her blind rages, she could hardly miss the bed, and it stopped her dead. “Good grief!” she said. “It’s enormous.”

Lisle casually looked up from his examination of one of the bedposts at the head.

Her bonnet was askew and her hair was coming loose, red curls tumbling against her pearly skin. Her clothes were rumpled from traveling. Anger still sparked in the impossibly blue eyes, though they’d widened at the sight of the bed that had been famous in Shakespeare’s time.

She looked wild, and though he ought to be used to that shatteringly beautiful face by now, the wildness threw him off balance again, and his heartbeat was sharp and painful.

“That’s why it’s called the Great Bed of Ware,” he said calmly. “You’ve never seen it before?”

She shook her head, and the curls danced madly.

“Quite old—by English standards, at any rate,” he said. “Shakespeare refers to it in Twelfth Night.”

“I’ve seen this style of thing,” she said. “Tons of oak, carved within an inch of its life. But nothing nearly as large.”

It was, indeed, carved with dizzying exuberance. Flowers and fruits and animals and people and mythological beings covered every inch of the black oak.

“Twelve feet square and nine feet tall,” he said. Facts were always safe and soothing. “It’s a room, really, enclosed by curtains. Look at the panels.”

She stepped nearer.

He caught her scent and remembered the feel of her body under his hands, when he’d pulled her out of the inn.

Facts. He focused on the physical features of the bed. Inside carved arches, two panels portrayed scenes of the town, including its famous swans. He lightly ran his index finger over their inlaid wood.

It lacked the grace of Egyptian art. To his surprise, though, he found it enchanting.

“They’re like windows, you see,” he said. “It was meant to entertain. It must have been even more eye-catching when it was new. Here and there you can see bits of paint. In its early days, it would have been quite colorful—like the temples and tombs of Egypt. And the same as in Egypt, visitors have left their marks.” He traced a set of initials. “Seals, too.”

He let his gaze return to her face. Wonder filled it now. The rage was gone, the storm blown over, because she was enchanted as well. She was sophisticated and cunning and had never been naïve. Yet her imagination was boundless, and she could be captivated, like a child.

“How odd that you’ve never seen it before,” he said.

She examined a lion’s head with a red seal on its nose. “Not at all odd,” she said. “Since we’re usually traveling to Derbyshire or Cheshire, we don’t take this road. And when I leave London, it’s because I’m in disgrace, which means getting me out and far away as quickly as possible. No time for sightseeing.”

He looked away from her face. Too much of that and he’d grow addlepated. He studied one of the satyrs adorning a bedpost. “Slapping that drunkard with your glove and calling him a coward wasn’t the cleverest thing you’ve ever done.”

“But it was immensely satisfying.”

“You lost your temper,” he said. When she lost her temper, he couldn’t trust her brain or her instincts. He couldn’t trust her to take care of herself.

He came away from the bedpost and folded his hands behind his back. ”What did your mother tell you about losing your temper?” he said, in the same patient tone he’d heard her mother employ on the day he’d met Olivia.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I must count to twenty.”

“I think you didn’t count to twenty,” he said.

“I wasn’t in the mood,” she said.

“I’m amazed you didn’t treat him to one of your apologies.” Putting a hand to his heart, he said in falsetto, “ ‘Oh, sir, I do most humbly and abjectly beg your pardon.’ Then you could flutter your eyelashes at him, and fall to your knees.”

She’d done this the first time they’d met, and the performance had left him dumbstruck.

“By the time you were done,” he went on, “everyone would be weeping—or reeling. Including him. And you could slip out quietly.”

“I’m sorry now I didn’t,” she said. “It would have prevented my being manhandled out of the inn.”

It would have prevented his feeling her supple body under his arm.

“I don’t see why you didn’t drag him out—to the courtyard—and put his head under the pump,” she said. “That’s what someone ought to have done when the trouble started. But everyone was afraid of him. Not you, I’d think—but you had to get all manly and overbearing with me.”

“It was more fun dragging you out,” he said.

She drew nearer and examined his eye.

Her scent swarmed about him and his heart was racing.

“That Belder,” she said, shaking her head. “Why didn’t he hit you harder?”

She swept out of the room.

The day was cool and grey, and the rain had laid the dust. The ladies wanted fresh air, they said. Riding in a gloomy, stuffy carriage wasn’t their idea of agreeable travel.

Olivia suspected that the reason they wanted the louvered window panels open was to admire the masculine scenery nearby.

It was fine scenery, and she couldn’t help enjoying it, too, though Lisle had turned out to be a Tragic Disappointment.

He rode alongside, practically at her shoulder, keeping pace with the carriage, instead of riding on ahead as she’d expected him to do. Their carriage’s speed, in consideration of the ladies’ old bones, was slower than Lisle could like. It was slower than Olivia liked, certainly. She wished she were riding as well, but she hadn’t thought she would, and hadn’t arranged for it.

Her saddle was packed away in one of the carriages with their other belongings, and packed deep. She hadn’t believed she’d need it until they reached their destination. While one could hire horses at the posting inns, and she could ride virtually any sort of horse without difficulty, a saddle was an altogether different article. A lady’s saddle was as personal an item as her corset, and made to fit her precisely.

Not that she needed a saddle. She was Jack Wingate’s daughter, after all, and as easy on a horse’s back as any gypsy.

But no one was to know she still did that sort of thing. No one was to know about the men’s clothes that Bailey had adapted to fit her, which lay neatly folded in a box among her other belongings.

She recalled how shocked Lisle had been the

first time he’d seen her in boy’s clothes. She was remembering that moment—How could she forget the comical look on his face?—when the coach stopped.

The carriage bounced slightly as the footmen jumped down from their perch at the back. She saw one hurry ahead to hold the horses.

“What is it?” said Lady Cooper.

“Lisle noticed something wrong with one of the wheels, I daresay,” said Lady Withcote.

The door opened and a footman put down the step. Lisle waited behind him. “No need to disturb yourselves, ladies,” Lisle said. “I only want Olivia.”

The ladies smiled at her.

“He only wants you,” said Lady Cooper.

“He said he’d leave me by the side of the road,” Olivia said.

“Don’t be silly,” said Lady Withcote. “He’ll do nothing of the kind.”

He’d do worse, Olivia thought. He’d had time to brood over the grievous injury she’d done his pride. By now he’d probably composed a very boring and irritating lecture.

“We’re not scheduled to stop,” she told him. “Not until—” She glanced down at her Paterson’s. “Not until Buntingford.”

“I want to show you something,” he said.