Falling Stars

That didn’t altogether explain why, as he eased his six-foot frame away from the doorway, he seemed to fill the room, or why her senses should bristle and quicken at his slightest motion.

She felt his knowing green-gold eyes upon her, a swiftly assessing glance, come and gone in seconds. Yet her flesh prickled and heated under it, as though under his hands, and she felt she’d been unclothed... and teased ... and abandoned.

She yanked her needle through the linen.

He stopped a moment to look over Penny’s shoulder at the untidy heap of paper, and teased her about preparing for a party as Wellington might a war campaign. Penny laughed and made some joking answer.

Then he moved toward Christina. She felt a frantic fluttering within, and a memory rose that sent a mortifying heat rushing up her neck.

The day after she’d first spoken to him, Marcus had found her alone in this sitting room. She’d been daydreaming out a window.

She’d heard him come up behind her, but hadn’t moved. She’d felt the same inner flutter then, and a confusing warmth, and the same mingled anxiety and anticipation. He’d stood behind her, not uttering a word. She’d held her breath, waiting, wondering what would happen next, all the while terrified someone would come—and hoping someone would. Then she’d felt his breath, a whisper against her neck that sent a warm tingle down her spine, all the way to her toes. “I just want to be near you,” he’d said, his voice so low it was a wonder she’d heard it past the frantic beating of her heart.

Her idiotic heart was growing frantic now, as he paused mere inches from her chair. What she felt was a perfectly sensible anxiety, she told herself. If he was still annoyed about finding her here, he could make her stay uncomfortable. And she must stay. Her house let for the next twelvemonth, Great-Aunt Georgiana gone to Scotland, Christina was trapped at Greymarch until the New Year.

At the moment she felt trapped in her chair by the tall masculine body looming over her.

“I’ve come to ask if you’d paint with us, Mrs. Travers.”

His rich baritone came from directly above her bowed head. She was staring at his gleaming boots, a hand’s breadth from her grey kid shoes. She didn’t want to look up until she had collected her rapidly disintegrating composure. He had already made her blush once, and she would rather hang than do it again—like the awkward schoolgirl she’d been all those years ago.

“I beg your pardon?” There was an infuriatingly childish wobble in her voice. She stabbed her needle into the handkerchief.

“We’ve decided to paint dragons. Delia and Livy said you’re an expert dragon painter.”

“Oh. I... well, that is very kind, but...” Oh, wonderful—stammering, too, like a tongue-tied adolescent.

“Also, Delia will not wear her smock, which Livy says she must do,” he went on. “Which places me in an awkward predicament.”

Christina raised her head quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid the lean, muscled length of male between the boots and the glint of gold in his eyes. Was that amusement she saw—or mockery?

“Good heavens, Marcus,” Penny exclaimed, “could you not leave it to a nursery maid?”

“Not before I’d ascertained the facts,” he answered. “For all I knew, the child might have a terror of smocks. Children do take unaccountable aversions, I’m told. Since she’s been otherwise perfectly agreeable, I concluded I had stumbled upon a strongly-rooted aversion.”

Christina found her voice. “It is an aversion,” she said. “But not to smocks in general—only Livy’s in particular, which are starched.”

“There, I knew it must be significant,” Marcus triumphantly told his sister-in-law. He turned back to Christina. “Starch, is it? She only said it was horrid, and she wouldn’t wear it.”

“Nor will she.” Christina rose. “I never thought to explain it to the maid. I’ll go find one of Delia’s smocks—unstarched—and—”

“And one for yourself,” he prompted. “You don’t want to spoil your gown with dragon paint.”

Yes, one for herself, of course. He’d come only because he wanted her to take the children off his hands. Firmly crushing a twinge of disappointment, she hurried out to find the dratted smocks.

***

Marcus had meant to leave the children in Christina’s care, and get away where he could put his thoughts back into order—for the angelic-looking twins had disordered them to an alarming degree.

He’d discovered that looking after little girls was nothing like minding rough-and-tumble little boys. Christina had called her daughters hoydens, but they seemed to Marcus the most fragile of china dolls. Out of doors, he found himself worrying that they weren’t dressed warmly enough, then that they were over warm, and would take a chill in consequence. Every game seemed too rough; all the places he’d taken for granted as perfectly safe for children abruptly became fraught with perils.

Aware his anxieties were absurd, he’d refrained from acting upon them and, as one would expect, no tragedy had occurred, not even a scraped knee. He’d spent the whole time on the edge of panic, all the same.

When they were safely indoors at last, he’d hardly begun to relax before Delia threw the fit about the smock, setting off all the ridiculous alarms again.

He’d given up and gone for their mama—and stumbled into other, worse difficulties.

He was thrown off-balance in the sitting room because Christina had blushed when he’d spoken to her, and the blush had drawn him too near. The scent of lavender wafted about her, and while he watched the faint pink steal slowly up her neck, the ghost of a long-banished memory had stolen upon him.

Once, in that same room, he’d wanted to touch his mouth to her flushed neck, but hadn’t dared, only stood and let her scent steal into his blood and make him desperate.

Despite all efforts to banish it, the recollection still hung in his mind. The blush was long gone, and she seemed cool enough at present, her attention on her painting. Marcus sat the length of the playroom table away, his nephews diligently working on either side, but he couldn’t concentrate.

The room was cozy and warm. From time to time the lavender scent stole toward him, then vanished. If it would only make up its mind and do one or the other, linger or go, he might make up his mind, too, and settle to his work or depart. But her scent continued to beckon and withdraw, leaving him uncertain and restless.

As he looked up for the hundredth time, he found Delia studying him, so gravely that he couldn’t help but smile. She answered with an impish grin. Then she slid down from her chair and scampered to his side, where she stood on tiptoe, balancing herself with one hand on his arm while she tried to peer over the table at his painting.

Marcus picked her up and sat her on his lap. It never occurred to him to ask if that was where she wished to be. The action was reflexive. It must have been correct, for Delia settled there, perfectly at home, and offered to help. Even to a seven-year-old it was obvious he wasn’t making satisfactory progress.

“I shall rinse the brush for you,” she said, “and help you pick the colors.”

Livy took umbrage at this. “You don’t know the right colors. Your dragon is pink and blue.”

“Perhaps Mr. Greyson likes pink and blue dragons,” Christina said. “If he doesn’t, he is perfectly capable of telling your sister so. Mind what you’re doing, Livy. Your dragon’s tail is about to go off the paper and onto the table.”

Livy frowned. “I’ve spoiled it.” Ignoring her mother’s reassuring murmur, the child scrambled down from her chair, snatched up the painting, and trotted to Marcus.

“It’s spoiled,” she told him, her countenance dejected as she held up the painting. “Delia made me spoil it.”

“I did not,” said Delia.

“It’s not spoiled,” Christina said, “and you are not to plague Mr. Greyson.”

“It’s just broken,” said six-year-old Robin.

“Uncle Marcus will fix it,” his brother consoled, patting Livy on the

head with all the condescending superiority of his eight years.

“You have to fix it yourself,” said Delia. “I’m helping him with his dragon.”

Marcus heard a faint, choked sound, suspiciously like laughter, from the other end of the table. But when he glanced that way, Christina’s countenance was sober.

“You made me spoil it,” Livy accused her sister. “You were whispering secrets to Mr. Greyson and telling wrong colors.”

Another smothered chuckle. This time, he discerned a twitch at the corner of Christina’s mouth. That was all. No reproach for the girls, no assistance to him in parlaying a truce.