He pulled his panama hat low on his head, shielding his face with its wide straw brim. Every piece of fabric on his body stuck to him. He was still chafed from yesterday’s journey, but the talcum powder helped with the discomfort.
He smelled horrendous. He hadn’t shaved in days. His legs were cramped and he couldn’t quite feel his toes. His arm rubbed raw where Linley’s bony shoulder pressed against him, and he needed to go to the toilet, but dared not ask Bedford for permission to stop. Patrick should have been miserable, but with Linley at his side, everything else seemed trivial.
She rested her head on his shoulder, listing back and forth as the elephant swayed through the forest. She’d fallen asleep or else he would have never gotten this close to her in full daylight with her father watching. Or Archie. Or Reginald. Or even Schoville.
Patrick hadn’t seen a young woman so intensely chaperoned since he danced with Princess Maud at her come-out ball. Linley’s guard dogs might not like it, but packed so tightly into the howdah baskets, there was little they could do. So Patrick cuddled her close and gloated. He would worry about the consequences later.
Unfortunately, the elephant stumbled, and the basket lurched, jostling Linley awake. She shot up, embarrassed to find herself in so intimate a position.
“I was rather comfortable,” he said. “Put your head back.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Linley studied her hands in her lap, too mortified to look him in the eye. What if someone had seen them—her father, or perhaps Archie? She would never hear the end of it.
“Well, then,” Patrick said after some silence. “I’ll just put my head on your shoulder and try to finish the rest of our nap.”
When he tried to do just that, Linley shrugged him off. “Don’t!”
“What is wrong with you?”
“I don’t want you to lay on me,” she said. “Nor do I want to lay on you.”
He frowned. “You did not seem to mind a moment ago.”
“I—I’m hot,” she lied. “It’s too hot to sleep bunched up together like that.” The truth was that she was afraid to tell him just how much she enjoyed sleeping against his body. “And besides, someone might see us.”
“Too late,” Patrick said. “And so what if they did see us? We weren’t doing anything wrong.”
Linley shook her head. “Wrong or not, how do you expect me to explain to my father if he turns around and catches us laying all over each other?”
Sometimes she frustrated Patrick so badly he wanted to pull his hair out. “You pout, and hum and haw, and try to wriggle your way out of things instead of handling them like an adult. If your father treats you like such a grown-up, why do you behave like a scared little girl?”
“Because sometimes I feel like a scared little girl.” It took every ounce of self-control not to scream at him. “If you want to talk about Phoenician iconography, I can talk about that. If you want to talk about Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, I can talk about that, too. But if you want me to explain how it makes me feel when my body presses up against yours, I have not the slightest idea where to start.”
“Oh. Well, of course. That’s perfectly understandable,” Patrick said. “I should have seen it from the start…You said your first kiss was the one we shared at the museum, correct?” When she nodded, he continued, “A girl as pretty as you could have been kissed any time she wanted to. So—stop me if I’m being presumptuous—you never wanted to kiss anyone before you kissed me.”
Linley blushed, but said nothing.
“And you don’t understand why you chose me out of all the men in the world.” He leaned toward her. “You’re wondering what makes me so special.”
She gave him a half-smile. “It’s confounding, to say the least.”
“Then I dare say it will come to confound you more because there is no true answer to the question,” Patrick explained. “It could simply be timing. Or luck—on my part. Or perhaps there is something monumental afoot. Either way, I cannot say. It isn’t for me to decide.”
“Who gets to decide, then?” Linley asked.
“I should think the Good Lord has the ultimate say in such matters,” he said with a shrug. “But it is your heart, and I think he leaves a great deal of the decision up to you.”
She laughed. “Then he must be awfully frustrated with me. Half the time, I can’t even decide which shoes to wear, much less tackle such important matters as my heart.”
“For our dinner at Claridge’s, you chose red shoes when most girls would have taken the safer route and picked black. I think that says a great deal about the type of woman you are.”