He grinned back, a fool’s look on his face. What were they doing? A brief affair before goodbye? Or the start of forever? He would not think the latter, except Gwendolyn did everything with purpose.
“Jackson,” she said. “’Tis too beautiful a day for woolgathering. What preoccupies you? Is it your notebook? Don’t worry. I have it in my satchel.”
“Thank you, but that is not it.”
“It should be. You’re much too absent-minded.” She cocked her head and tipped the corner of her mouth up in a jaunty half grin. “But I do not mind. It gives me a way to look after you. I have your spectacles too.”
He laughed, feeling light as the clear blue sky. “It is not that, Gwendolyn. It is you who preoccupies me. I enjoy watching you ride.” In several senses.
She leaned forward and patted her mare’s neck. “She’s an excellent mount.” The heated look she cast his way suggested Gwendolyn understood multiple senses as well. “As are you.” A grin.
“And you are an excellent horsewoman.” He winked.
She laughed, throwing her head back and sending cascades of merriment into the sky. “No more naughtiness.”
He pressed a hand to his heart. “Naughty? Me? Never. In all seriousness, though, and speaking only in the equestrian sense, youarean excellent horsewoman.”
Were those roses of pride blooming in her cheeks?
Perhaps time to pry a bit more. “Did you ride often as a young girl?”
The roses shriveled, but she stayed strong in her seat. “I did. It was my favorite form of diversion. I rode every morning upon waking and sometimes in the afternoon as well. My mare’s name was Rosalind.”
“Truly? From Shakespeare?”
Gwendolyn nodded. “Rosalind is… overlooked. By Romeo. By readers, and I knew what that felt like.”
If he could dip her parents in horse dung and roll them into the Thames, he would. Perhaps set them on fire in the process.
“Do not feel sorry for me.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “At least not yet.”
Hell, the worst had yet to come.
She pressed her personal clouds away and pushed her shoulders back. “Besides, once I met you, Jackson Cavendish, I often wished for a single moment of being overlooked.”
“Ha!” He could hardly deny it. “I wanted to kiss you the very moment I saw you. And that wanting has never stopped.”
She peeked at him. “You want to kiss me now?”
“Is the sky blue?”
She looked up. “Mostly. The clouds make it white in places.” She faced him. “So you only mostly wish to kiss me. At the current moment.”
He nudged his horse closer to hers, and his leg brushed her skirts as he leaned as close as circumstances allowed. “What I wish to do is to drag you onto my lap and ravish you. That isallI want. Nomostlyabout it.”
Her roses returned, thank Jove, and she focused on the ground before them. “I assume you’ve been riding since you left your mother’s womb, so I shall not return your question. Instead, I should like to know… did your mother like to ride?”
“A bit. She preferred to stay with her flowers. She’d sit in her greenhouse with all the London papers piled near, and she’d press the news stories she found most fascinating in her notebooks beside the season’s flowers.”
“London news and flowers?”
He nodded. “The London season and the seasons of the year. She often edited my father’s writing. If there was anything good and clever in his sentences, it came from her.”
“I should have liked to know her, if only to pick her mind. And your father.”
“They would both have adored you.”
Her gaze slipped to her lap and did not raise for some moments.
