Bewitched by His Kiss

This wasn’t magic, as he claimed. It wasn’t a result of their frantic, naked coupling in the dew three years ago. Lord Elderwood had asked—no, demanded to marry her then and several times since, when she’d accompanied Aunt Edna and Peony to London for the Season. He claimed there was an unbreakable bond between them. Sheer nonsense! It was nothing but animal attraction and could be overcome by willpower.

She had plenty of that, but to get away, she must disarm him. She must, but instead she found herself running her lips over his rough cheeks, nipping his ear in return, burying her nose in his aroma and heat.

The muscles of his shoulders softened, and he leaned into her, the pressure sensual and insistent but no longer fierce. He was sure of her now.

And no longer unstoppable, but she must make him think he had succeeded. She let her hands fall, let her breasts sink against his chest, and at the crushing of their bodies, so close and so hot, she almost succumbed again.

No. She ran one hand up his torso and around to his back, fondling but not really, while the other hand slithered down his hip and into the pocket of her cloak.

She grasped the pistol and pressed the muzzle against his groin.

“Let me go, or I will shoot you,” she said.

* * *

David stilled. Damn, that certainly felt like a gun. His cock cringed in abject terror. The rest of him was merely annoyed. For the sake of that most important part, he released her. “What in Hades is wrong with you?”

“I don’t want this.” She backed away. “Can you not get that into your thick head?”

“Come now. You were enjoying it as much as I was.” He moved toward her.

Lucasta cocked the pistol and leveled it. “I mean it. If you so much as touch me again, I will shoot.”

He considered her. She had more resolution than several other women combined, but if it came down to it, would she shoot him? And if she shot, what were the odds she would hit him?

He shrugged. At this range, she would be hard put to miss. For all he knew, the gun wasn’t even loaded, but he decided not to chance it. “Very well,” he said. “If you’re absolutely sure you weren’t enjoying yourself...”

She didn’t lower the pistol as any ordinary woman would do at this juncture. “I’ll thank you to remember that I’m engaged to your close friend.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” he said. “As I’ve told you before, you’re making a mistake. Why ruin poor Alexis’s life?”

The insult didn’t faze her; she waved his words aside with the cocked pistol and an impatient frown. “You needn’t be concerned for Alexis. I mean him no harm.”

“You may not mean it, but you’ll do it anyway. Uncock the pistol, woman. It could go off at any second.”

“No,” she said, striding away.

“No what?” He followed. “It won’t go off? It’s not loaded, is it?”

“Of course it’s loaded.” Her voice overflowed with scorn.

“Dear me. For whom was the bullet intended—originally, that is?”

Lucasta huffed.

“Do you usually come out at dawn, half-dressed and carrying a loaded pistol?”

She kept going.

“You’re not wearing stays,” he said. “You’re wearing nothing at all under that gown. To me, that indicates you intended taking it off.”

“Or that I dressed in a hurry,” she snapped, “without the help of a maid.” She whirled, waving the damned gun. “Get on your horse and go away. Come back at a civilized hour.”

“Very well, you dressed in a hurry,” David said. “I’m willing to believe that. But why? If you didn’t intend to roll in the meadow, why would you rush out here at dawn?”

* * *

He was impossible to deal with.

She lost her wits with the Earl of Elderwood. She said the wrong things, she behaved like a ninny, and much as she would like to retreat in a hurry to the safety of the house, she didn’t dare. What if Peony hadn’t finished rolling in the dew? Knowing Lord Elderwood and his absurd fascination with folk magic—he was far worse than Peony—he was here to visit the Enchanted Meadow at dawn.

She couldn’t let him see Peony. She had to keep him away until all danger of such a catastrophe was past.

“Obviously it was for another reason entirely,” she said, stalling while she tried to think of one. “You know I don’t believe that nonsense about rolling in the dew.”

It was light enough now that she saw the annoyance cross his face. How could a grown man, in this day and time, believe in such a fool’s ritual?

Oh, she admitted her own stupidity in the whole affair. Three years ago, when still living in Sussex under the care of her paternal uncle, John Barnes, she’d heard the housemaids teasing one another about rolling naked in the dew the next morning, which was May Day. Knowing it was useless to order them not to—the hold of superstition was far too great—she resigned herself to protecting them instead. The next day, she’d woken before dawn, dressed in a rush and hurried to the meadow most likely to be used for such folly.

No maids came, and nor did their swains. She’d been about to return to the house when a swarm of wasps, followed by Lord Elderwood, had disturbed her vigil—and her entire life.

Afterward, Lucasta learned that her uncle, too, had risen before dawn and prevented the maids from leaving the house, on the grounds that it would take them away from their chores, which was both untrue and unfair. Much as she hated superstition, she loathed her uncle more. He was a mean-tempered, clutch-fisted taskmaster. Until the age of twenty-five, she would be under his thumb, granted the most meager of allowances until she gained control of her inheritance. Since it was her fortune from which the allowance came, it should make no difference to him whether she spent a little more or less, but instead he kept reinvesting her earnings, assuring her that in the end she would thank him.

Now that it was near the end and her capital that much more, she was grudgingly thankful, but not because of his supposed foresight. He could never have predicted that she would need every penny to move far, far away and start a new life where no one could find her, particularly the Earl of Elderwood.

She glanced away from the wood and the meadow, frantic for inspiration, and then at the two massive oaks behind her. “I’m here to look for proof of a Beltane rite.”

“A Beltane rite.” His tone was laced with both suspicion and...interest. Perfect. She’d caught him.

Still, he might not be distracted for long. Clutching the pistol in one hand and gesturing with the other, she led him away from the wood. “According to one of the local tales, the location shifts somewhat, but if, on May morning, one follows a direct line starting with the two largest oaks on the eastern side of the wood, and crosses the brook and walks up the rise, one can see directly through to the meadow as the sun comes over the crest. Needless to say I don’t believe this—that wood is far too thick—but the only way to prove it for the purposes of my research is to go up there.” She hurried down the hill and waded into the brook, holding the pistol well above her head. It would never do to let the powder get wet. “You do know about my research, don’t you?”

“Alexis may have mentioned something,” Elderwood said, his tone now so bland that it was almost worse than open derision.

“I’m compiling a vast collection of folklore,” she said. “I intend to publish it.”

“Good for you,” he said, as if she were a child who had sewn her first crooked sampler. What a pity she couldn’t shoot him right now. Through a haze of fury, she heard him drawl on. “And what, pray tell, has this to do with Beltane?”

Nothing, of course. She set the fury aside to deal with later. “Only that the spot from which one sees the meadow is where one of the Beltane fires would be lit. The other would be in the meadow itself.”

“But the fires would be lit the night before, not the morning after, so how would one know where to light them?”

“That’s the whole point of it,” she said, struggling up the hill with the wet skirts of her gown slapping against her legs. “If the guesswork is correct and the fires are properly aligned, the fairy mound opens. Supposedly the door is somewhere near that copse at the top of the rise.”

“If you say so.”

He was right to be skeptical, since she was making this up as she went along. Down by the wood, a partridge flew from the underbrush, and Elderwood’s horse gave a startled whinny. Lucasta glanced that way, worried for Peony again.

“Why, I wonder, are you pitching me this gammon?” Lord Elderwood said with a chuckle, and just like that, he plucked the pistol out of her hand.