The Magic of His Touch

At that bold statement, she should have taken fright once again, but...she didn’t. Instead, a rush of unexpected heat shimmered through her from the tips of her nipples to the place between her thighs.

Appalled at herself, she struggled to pull the shift over her head. She was wet with dew, and bits of grass stuck to her everywhere, and so did the shift.

And she wasn’t beautiful, either—she was too tall and entirely the wrong shape, and passably pretty at best. Perhaps that was why she’d had such a shocking reaction to what he’d said.

“A lovely girl like you deserves better than this,” the man said.

She wanted to scream at him. She wasn’t lovely at all. She’d been assured of that often enough. His words hurt, which was ridiculous, seeing as she didn’t know him and didn’t care what he thought. Covering herself took forever and made her angrier with each passing second, at both him and herself.

When she finally emerged, he wasn’t watching her anymore, but gazing across the meadow as if alert for something. His lecherous friend?

Unnerved, she hastened into her gown and settled the skirts about her. “You may leave now,” she said with what she hoped passed for icy dignity.

He turned and eyed her. The corner of his mouth curled up. “Your stockings and boots.”

It was infuriatingly obvious that he wouldn’t budge until she obeyed him. She sat on the cold, damp ground and pulled on her stockings and then her boots. She stood and grabbed her shawl.

“Ho!” came a distant voice. “Where are you, old fellow?”

“Coming!” cried her persecutor. “Go home,” he said softly. He vaulted onto his horse and was gone.

Deprived of even the pleasure of stalking away in high dudgeon, Peony did as she was told.

When Lucasta tapped on her bedchamber door a while later, Peony was stark naked again. “You may come in if you don’t laugh,” she said bitterly, turning the key in the door.

Lucasta slipped in, her usually tidy hair falling down around her ears, and mud, leaves and several white blossoms clinging to her gown.

Peony burst into giggles. “Whatever happened to you? All that mud! Your gown is ruined.” She locked the door again.

“A stray bull,” Lucasta said, “and it’s all your fault. I saw you were gone and went out to check on you, but the horrid creature took a fancy to me. I’m lucky I arrived home intact.” She eyed Peony and snorted. “You’ve bits of grass and weeds stuck all over you.”

Peony shivered, returning to the painstaking task of picking every bit of greenery from her skin. “I should love to wash it off, but I daren’t ask for a bath. The maids will be sure to tell Mrs. Groggins, and she’ll tell Aunt Edna and Papa, and then I’ll really be in the soup.”

“Let me help.” Lucasta shed her gown. “We can say the mud and grass were stuck on me. I shall explain that I went out to check precisely where the sun first falls on the Enchanted Meadow on May Day. I’ll say it’s significant in an ancient Beltane rite.”

“Thank you,” Peony said dully. “Is it?”

“I have no idea, but it’s absurd enough to be plausible.” She poured wash water into the basin, wet a towel and wrung it out, and began to swab the debris from Peony’s goose-pimpled skin.

Her cheerfully sympathetic expression only made Peony feel worse.

“I gather rolling in the dew produced no result,” Lucasta said after a while.

Peony shivered all over, and it wasn’t just from being naked and cold. She pushed the memories of the man who’d ruined everything to the back of her mind, along with her inappropriate reaction to him. “It was freezing cold and sopping wet, and I felt horridly exposed. Now what am I to do?”

“Maybe you could try something that will give Lord Elderwood an immediate disgust of you, such as passing wind at dinner. Your father and Aunt Edna won’t dare to push you at him after that.”