A Lady of Persuasion (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy #3)

“Thank you,” she murmured, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Really, the trick of it’s all in the timing. And it’s Mr. Yorke you ought to thank,” Toby replied, breathing in the delicious scent of her hair. “I’d never have learned that maneuver if not for him.”

“Truly?”

“My mother forbade me to practice that vault, you see. Told me I’d break my neck. So naturally, Yorke encouraged me just to spite her. I spent most of my fourteenth summer in his eastern pasture, practicing. Took me weeks, and I took my share of nasty spills, but I finally mastered the way of it.”

“I can understand why your mother objected. It sounds horribly dangerous.” She raised her head and looked up at him. “Why on earth did you want to learn?”

“I had my heart set on joining the cavalry. Though deep down, I knew I never could. With my father gone, it was too great a risk. If I died without an heir, my mother and sisters would be left alone. Still, at fourteen I had my dreams. Pictured myself charging around French battlefields, spilling Bonapartist blood.”

Toby laughed a little. Ah, to be young and spend hours spinning detailed, grandiose fantasies of changing the world. Isabel certainly wasn’t a girl any longer, but she’d somehow retained that youthful idealism he’d long outgrown. He didn’t always understand her zeal, but he did admire it. At times, he envied it. Honor, Justice, Charity … the way she pronounced those terms, he could hear the capital letters implied. They were words she spoke often, but never lightly. And she took the same earnest tone when she spoke of being a Lady, with a capital L. Toby hadn’t thought much of being a Sir since he was a boy, envisioning himself the hero of a lost Arthurian legend: Sir Toby the Valiant. Isabel made him feel that there could be something to this whole notion of nobility, aside from assuming his place in the throng of bored aristocrats—men with nothing better to do of an afternoon than sit at the club swilling brandy. Perhaps he could make his title something more than just the fading gleam on a centuries-old suit-of-armor.

Or perhaps Isabel could.

“Cavalry or no, that vault turned out to be a useful trick.” He squeezed her hand and donned a devilish grin. “Soon I came to appreciate its other application.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, impressing the young ladies, of course.” He brushed a light kiss on her lips. “Did it work?”

She nodded, blushing.

“Very good. Let’s see if I can impress you further.” He thrust his free arm under her hips and swept her off her feet.

She squeaked with surprise. “Toby!”

“Oh, I like that noise,” he said, holding her in his arms as he crossed the shallow stream. “Can you make that one again?” he asked, lowering her to her feet. “Later tonight?”

She dismissed his teasing with a little wave of her hand and walked on ahead.

“That’s rather bold of you,” he said, grinning at the enticing sway of her hips as she marched away. “How do you know you’re not walking the wrong direction?”

“Am I?” she asked, without pausing to look back.

“No.”

“Well, then.”

He watched her walk a few paces more before starting after her. Following her path at a leisurely pace, he twisted a length of ivy from a nearby branch and worked it with both hands.

“Wait,” he called. “Hold right there.”

She paused, framed between two trees—standing in the doorway between this small, shaded grove and the sunlit world beyond. A corona of golden light surrounded her, caressing every lush curve of her silhouette.

“What is it?” she asked.

Toby couldn’t even answer. He just stood there, blinking, awestruck by the vision of loveliness before him. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he slowly approached his wife. One by one, he pulled the pins from her hair as she looked up at him, adorably befuddled. At last her dark tresses tumbled free, and she arranged them about her shoulders with an unconscious toss of her head.

“There, that’s better.” Grinning like a fool, Toby adorned her gleaming ebony crown with the ivy wreath he’d fashioned, then framed her bewildered smile in his hands. “Isabel, I know I’ve told you this a hundred times or more. And now I regret not saving the words for this moment. For that matter, I regret ever speaking them to anyone else, because now the words seem too paltry, too common. Completely inadequate. But I promise you, I’ve never meant them more honestly than I do right here, right now. You are … beautiful. Truly, you take my breath away.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, my. Now that was impressive indeed.”

“Was it?”

“Yes,” she laughed. “Even I’m breathless, and I’m not romantic by nature. I can’t imagine what that little speech must have done to your young, impressionable ladies.”