Sitting so close on the bench, occasionally their knees touched or arms crossed as they both played, stretching under or over each other to reach the keys, making music together.Exchanging ideas to create a musical journey.Collaborating.Vincent would gladly spend the rest of the day like this with her.
Eventually when he played it all the way through, it sounded so much better than he had imagined it could.“Yes!That’s it!”In his excitement, he cupped her cheeks and kissed her.
He pulled back, not regretting the kiss but suddenly worried that he had gone too far in his enthusiasm.
She stared back at him, her eyes wide in shock, her lips slightly parted.A smile began to spread across her face, lighting her brown eyes to sherry, with tiny flecks of gold.Her touching the tip of her pink tongue to lick her lips was his undoing.
He cupped her downy soft cheek with one hand and rested the other on the creamy, bare strip of skin on her shoulder, and leaned in for another kiss.Slowly, to give her a chance to avoid him if he had indeed gone too far.
She met him halfway, resting her palm on his chest.Not to push him away but to caress him, perhaps feeling his pounding heart.He thought it would pound right out of his chest as she sweetly responded to him.Tentatively at first but she quickly relaxed and gave herself to the kiss, to him, wholeheartedly.With his thumb he stroked the naked skin on her neck above her scarf, feeling her madly racing pulse.
He felt the instant she recalled that someone could walk in on them at any moment, a fraction of an instant before he came to his own senses.With regret, he let her pull away.It would be so easy to simply lift her onto his lap and wrap his arms around her.He could happily spend all afternoon holding her, kissing her, playing together.He already knew what it felt like to hold her on his lap, and he fervently wanted to do so again.
“I should, um…” She rose from the bench, a slight tremble in her hands.
“Yes, you, um…” He couldn’t complete a coherent thought.He watched her walk out of the room, stunned at his intense response to a simple kiss, and enjoying the view of her retreating figure almost as much as though she were walking toward him.
He put his music away.He couldn’t possibly concentrate on composing anymore, or even practicing Rossini.Perhaps Matthew had the right of it.A gallop was what he needed to clear his head.
As he entered the hall, Miss Walden was handing Kendall letters to mail.
“I was about to go for a ride,” Vincent said, striding toward them.“I would be happy to take your letters to town and post them.”
She gifted him with a soft smile and handed over two letters.“Thank you, my lord.”
He stopped watching her walk down the hall only when he heard Kendall smother a chuckle.Vincent lifted his chin and pulled his shoulders back.“Something you want to say, Kendall?”
The butler stood at attention, his expression carefully blank.“I’ll have the grooms saddle your horse right away, my lord.”
Less than an hour later, Vincent slowed his horse to a walk as he approached the outskirts of Sidmouth proper.He pulled the two letters out of his coat pocket and read the address of the recipients for the tenth time.One was an academy for young ladies in Falmouth, the other in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Opposite ends of the country.Much too far away.
And why did it matter to him?Of course Miss Walden would need employment after her project with Aunt Gert ended.She was wise to plan ahead for her future.
He tucked the letters back into his pocket and rode through town until he found the shops he wanted.
Chapter 16
Sophia collected the last of the melted wax she’d scraped off the cave floor into the gathered bottom of her skirt, grabbed the torch, and went out of the tunnel and kept going all the way to the edge of sand where the incoming tide was wetting the beach.She let the breeze scatter the wax scraps, then shimmied her gown back into place and tucked the penknife in her pocket.
Staring back at the tunnel entrance, she let her gaze slide along the bluff.Surely this wasn’t the only cave on the beach.Might there be another one that would offer better shelter for Mildred until they could solve the problem with her engagement to Wicked Wingfield?
They had managed to sneak her out of the house and stable this morning but couldn’t count on getting her out before Ruby or the grooms began their duties every day.Sophia had pointed out a priest’s hole off to one side, where someone had hidden from authorities once upon a time.Mildred couldn’t simply stay in the passageway, what with Fairfax and Mrs.Royston regularly using them.For all she knew, so did Wallace and Xavier.But Mildred said the cramped priest’s hole was unacceptable.She’d rather take her chances in the folly or a cave.
Beyond Theo’s work site, there was another dark space on the bluff.A shadow?Or another cave?Sophia retrieved her torch and picked her way over the rocky beach, using her hand to shield the torch from blowing out.
* * *
“Going exploring in caves?”Vincent hid a grin when Miss Walden yelped in surprise, jumped in the air, and spun to face him, her eyes gone wide.For such a tiny thing, she had an impressive vertical leap.Last night he’d thought she’d jumped so high because of holding onto the stall railing.
He shouldn’t enjoy scaring her.Though if the little minx was going to keep deceiving him, surely he was allowed a bit of sport at her expense?He’d heard the footsteps behind them in the passageway last night.Miss Ebrington had to have hidden and followed them.It had taken supreme restraint not to whirl around and confront her.
What explanation would she or Miss Walden have given for the girl’s presence?
Unless his imagination was running amuck.Old houses made noises, creaks and groans that had more to do with weather and changing temperatures than ghosts or young women behaving in mysterious ways.
He’d thought he’d seen melted wax in the cave they’d explored yesterday, and that Miss Walden had deliberately stood on it to prevent him from examining it, hiding it with her skirts.Yet today when he’d returned from his ride and entered the tunnel to check, there was no sign it had ever been there.
