So she reached out and plucked the beetle from Simon’s hand. “Oh,” she exclaimed. “How beautiful! You picked her because she was beautiful, didn’t you?”
“I did not!” He stepped back, insulted.
“I’m going to call her Mrs. Rainbow,” Ginny cooed.
“It’s a boy beetle! His name is Mr. Slugfit!” When neither of these pronunciations drew a response, he tried again. “I got it off a dead body!”
“Oh, no,” Ginny said, running a finger lightly along the beetle’s back. “Poor Mrs. Rainbow. What a dreadful ordeal. You’re safe now.”
She’d ignored Simon’s gagging noises all afternoon, and taken Mrs. Rainbow to tea. And that was how the game had begun—with a beetle and a casual announcement. Over the course of that summer, they’d made their way from “You can’t catch a fish,” to “I’m going to beat you to the top of that tree.” They’d become friends—friends who would never have admitted their friendship, of course, but fast friends nonetheless.
To find that he’d made cuff links of beetles… Ginny sighed and turned over the trinket. “Are you filthy rich, then?”
He held her eyes, his face somber. “I positively stink with wealth,” he said. “And if you don’t mind, I’ve only got forty-eight hours to seduce you, now. I was hoping to convince you to walk with me to the oak today.”
“Am I supposed to be so overcome with nostalgia when you bring me there that I succumb to your most desperate overtures?”
“My irresistible overtures,” he said confidently. “And yes—you’ve got the general idea.”
Ginny let herself appear to think this over. “Well. I’m overcome with the need to fetch my bonnet.”
But she didn’t go. Instead, she stepped forward and took his wrist. She heard the slight intake of his breath as she examined his hand—a man’s hand, big and broad, with a callus on his thumb and index finger where he’d wielded a pen. Little nicks marred his skin, ones that hadn’t existed seven years ago.
She turned his hand over.
“On second thought,” he said. “We could adjourn to your bedchamber now.”
Ginny undid the backing of his cufflink and slipped it into place. “Poor Simon,” she said, making sure the little diamond-eyed beetle was secure. “Do you want me very, very badly then?”
His other hand touched her face. Slowly—almost unwillingly—she let him raise her chin from contemplation of his wrist. His eyes seemed dark, and they glittered with some unspoken emotion. “Yes,” he said. “God knows I’ve wished it otherwise over the years. But yes. I have wanted you since I first knew what want was.”
Under the rules of the game, she should make light of that admission. She needed to say something to defuse those words of their latent power.
But she could not make herself do it. Some things were too true to dismiss.
He leaned down and ever so lightly brushed his lips against hers—so softly, it was as if their breath kissed, rather than their mouths.
“Go get your bonnet,” he told her.
THEY DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING for the first minute of their walk. Then he noticed the men working in the field and he turned to her in shock.
“They’re cutting your tulips,” he said. “Why are they bloo—I mean, why are they cutting your tulips?”
Ginny sighed. She didn’t want to have this conversation. “Because Mr. Redright is paying me twenty pounds for them.”
“But—”
“Maybe twenty pounds is nothing to a man with diamond cuff links, but it’s a great deal to me at the moment.”
He scowled. “God, Ginny, I—”
“Don’t worry about me.” She patted his hand. “I’m just showing my foolhardy Barrett blood after all these years.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I hate it when you talk that way about yourself. I hated it when my parents did it. I hated it when anyone else did it. So you weren’t as well-off as my people. What does that matter?”
He had always been hotheaded and ill-mannered. Her other friends had never been able to understand why she enjoyed his company. But the other side of his total disregard for etiquette had been an utter indifference to the disparity in their stations.
True, he’d never treated her like a lady. He’d treated her like an equal instead, and that had seemed far more precious.
“Simon,” she said slowly, “I was—I am—a Barrett.”
“So?”
“So, we’re not just polite folk who quietly run a little out-of-pocket from time to time. Barretts are the most foolish of any fools who have ever had pretensions to gentility. Just look around us.” She spun, indicating the acres of tulips. “Where do you think these came from?”