would think it unladylike if I had been dancing with Fred. And he wouldn’t have behaved half as gentlemanly as you do.”
“Wouldn’t he?” he asked, all of his senses instantly alert.
“You know he wouldn’t. He always holds me far too close, and he’s forever staring down at my bosom.”
Nicholas suppressed the now familiar swell of jealousy and rage. The primitive urge to find Fred, and any other gentlemen who dared to look at Maggie, and beat them to a bloody pulp. “If anyone ever so much as lays a finger on you, I’ll—”
“You never do,” she interrupted, a hint of accusation in her eyes. “When we’re dancing, I mean.”
He was briefly diverted from his anger. “I never do what?”
“Stare at my bosom.”
Heat rose in his cheeks. He looked at her a moment, dumbstruck, before giving her a crooked smile. “What bosom?”
Maggie responded to his teasing with a rare blush of her own. At sixteen, she had the beginnings of a figure that promised to one day be as glorious as that of her late mother, a lady who had often been referred to as the Somerset Aphrodite. “Naturally you wouldn’t notice any of my endowments. You’re too busy paying court to Cornelia Peabody.”
“What?”
“Jenny told me so.”
Nicholas scowled. “She wishes I would court one of the baker’s daughters. I daresay old Peabody’s offered to give her a discount on hot cross buns if I take one of them off his hands. Though how the devil either of them think I could keep a wife on less than five pounds a year is a mystery to me.”
“It’s not impossible,” Maggie said.
“No, not impossible.” He affected to give the matter a great deal of thought. “I suppose Miss Peabody could always find employment. Perhaps your father might even give her a job scrubbing out chamber pots up at the main house?” His smile reemerged. “Then there’s the issue of lodging her, of course, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind living with me in that godforsaken little room of mine above the stable. Cornelia Peabody has always struck me as the sort of girl who longs to set up house in a small, rat-infested cupboard.”
Maggie wasn’t diverted by his teasing. “Then it’s not true?”
“Gad, Maggie, what in blazes would I want with Cornelia Peabody?”
“She’s very pretty.”
Nicholas plucked a dark blue wildflower from the grass and twisted the stem idly between his fingers. It was a forget-me-not. The hearty little flower ran rampant at Beasley Park, decorating the grounds in a wash of blue every spring. The same arresting shade of blue as Maggie Honeywell’s eyes. “So are lots of girls in the village. What does that signify?”
“And, by all accounts, a soft-spoken, well-behaved little lady, even if she is a baker’s daughter.”
He tickled her face with the forget-me-not, drawing its petals along the bridge of her nose, over the bow of her rosy-hued lips, and down to the delicate cleft in her stubborn little chin. “Do you mean she doesn’t go about telling people to ‘piss off’ and calling them ‘jealous arses’ and ‘confounded swine’?”
Maggie snatched the wildflower out of his hand. “I am sure she doesn’t.”
“Then more fool her,” Nicholas said, lying back down on the grass. “Everyone knows high-spirited termagants are the only sorts of ladies I fancy.”
“Such compliments. I believe I shall swoon.”
A foolish grin spread over Nicholas’s face, and as he gazed up at the clear blue sky, he reached out his hand halfway between their two bodies, turning it palm up in unspoken invitation. Almost immediately he felt Maggie’s small, slender hand sliding into his.
“Can you get away tonight after supper?” she asked softly.
He shook his head. “I’m already behind in my chores. I’ll have to catch up this evening if I’m to have any hope of meeting you tomorrow.”
Maggie twined her fingers through his. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow, then,” he’d echoed.
Tomorrow.
Nicholas squeezed his eyes shut against the oppressive darkness of the loose box. His chest burned with the effort it took to stave off an onslaught of angry tears.
There would be no tomorrows.
He was never going to see Maggie Honeywell again.
Within the next hour, Fred would return with the magistrate. And then Nicholas would be hauled off to jail. From there, he imagined Fred would see that things proceeded with the utmost haste. The Burton-Smythes had a great deal of influence in the West Country. There would be no delays in judgment, no last-minute reprieves.