Read Online Lady Merry's Dashing Champion by Jeane Westin - Free Book Online

with her first love. And yet, he was her first.
    She took another deep breath to stop the slight dizziness that seemed to seep through to her bones.
    Was Lady Felice insane to turn away from such a man, or brainless as Chiffinch thought? Probably both, Meriel decided at that moment.
    Though tall and lithe, the earl was well muscled—the body of a man who practiced at the sword every day, who rode to horse with the king and played at tennis with him. Then, it was said, they doused their heads with water or leapt into the Thames to cool themselves.
    Meriel, feeling overwarm herself, thought a leap into the river a good thing.
    The earl was grace itself, sitting there, his long legs crossed, his black knit hosen stretching tight around his calves without a wrinkle, his lengthy, strong fingers entwining the glass. She tried not to stare, but the cordovan leather-booted foot slightly swinging in front of her captivated her gaze.
    "And do you find me so changed, as well, Felice, or have you forgotten your lawful husband's features?"
    Meriel swallowed hard. "Your pardon, Giles. Was I staring? I vow I'm but weary from travel."
    "Ah," he said, looking away again because he had forgotten how, when Felice was in a pleasant mood, her body and face relaxed, her beauty made his stomach knot and his cock ache. He had remembered how strikingly beautiful she was, although he had tried to erase that memory along with many others. Hell's fire, she had even grown in beauty in these last days. Her dark hair was glossier than a young blackbird's feathers. Or did everything taking on new life shine like that? He could not understand why he thought so. Had it happened when he had not been looking? And her dark-lashed gray eyes were larger and even lighter than morning clouds, more like smoke against a clear sky. They would haunt him again later as he tried to sleep this night, finding no comfort in the warm body of his mistress next to him, though he would surely try. And was Felice's firelit face more alive, or were the flames playing tricks on a mind that he had ever had in his stern control? Now it was he who stared, for how could a man not gaze on that which gave off so much radiance?
    "All is well at Harringdon Hall," she said, struggling for wifely conversation.
    He nodded without speaking.
    She struggled on. "Wallace has trimmed the yew hedge surrounding the parterre behind the main hall most perfectly, and spring has arrived early." She prayed that she'd remembered the correct name of the chief gardener and the plan of the old manor she'd studied for hours. What could be worse? The man facing her was known to design his own gardens and dig in the soil like a farmer while she had avoided flowers her life long.
    "And the centifolia roses I planted when their roots were bare?" He looked at her with mounting curiosity.
    "Ah, the roses," Meriel said, smoothing her gown, playing for time. Were these the large roses Sir Edward had brought from Holland before the war, the ones with one hundred petals? She did not recall that they had bloomed yet in Canterbury and most certainly would not have bloomed next to the sea in Norfolk. "Well budded, I believe I heard Wallace say, but you know I pay little attention," she responded, praying that she had not been too clever by half, and saying amen to no more talk of roses.
    "I am surprised you remember that much, Felice, since you take no interest in my gardens."
    Meriel decided at the moment that she must be bolder or give herself away. "I seem to surprise you much this evening, m'lord." She tried to make her words hold a suggestion of much more than she said, as Lady Felice could do only too well.
    The earl straightened and put both feet on the floor. "Not so, Felice, for I doubt you could ever truly surprise me. A wife who aborts my son and heir with the help of a whorehouse midwife could ne'er surprise me again."
    Giles stood abruptly, gripped with tension, He was surprised that these words defining