Deborah Hale - The Wedding Wager

Something stirred inside him at the sound, and he had to admit it was more than the anticipation of catching her off guard. His lips warmed at the memory of kissing her hand.

As the door eased open, Morse tried to rein in the eager grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“You are late, Miss Freemantle.”

Leonora gasped at the sound of Morse Archer’s voice. In the very next instant she berated herself for letting him catch her off guard—again.

“Considering this is the first morning you have managed to arrive on time, Sergeant, it ill-behooves you to criticize.”

Blast the man to kingdom come! She had been anxious to reassert her authority this morning and already he had put her on the defensive.

Morse closed his book. Had he read that much since yesterday? She heartily doubted it.

Leaning back in his chair, he swept her with a look that made Leonora break out in gooseflesh from head to toe.

“You mistake me, Miss Freemantle.” His tone sounded far too cordial for her liking. The warm baritone wrapped itself around her heart. “I didn’t mean to criticize, only to state the fact. If you took a few extra minutes to dress and fix your hair, I would be the last to complain. You look particularly charming this morning.”

Her heart hammered and her stomach clenched. How had he guessed that she’d dithered a full ten minutes in her choice of a gown? That, against all logic, she’d spent more precious minutes dressing her hair in a marginally less severe style.

Her feet itched to flee, but Leonora stood her ground. “I will thank you not to mock me, Sergeant. I am well aware I look a fright this morning.”

There’d been nothing she could do to remedy the sleepless smudges beneath her eyes.

“Not that it is any business of yours how I look.” She strode to the table. “I am here to teach you, not to provide you with an object to scrutinize. Is that understood?”

If she expected his usual surly retort, it was not forthcoming this morning. “I understand you better every day, Miss Freemantle.”

She could find no fault with his words, or with the cheerful tone in which they were uttered. Yet, Leonora could not escape the feeling that Morse Archer was having a sharp little jest at her expense.

Retrenching to more solid conversational ground, she pointed to the open book in his hand. “I see you have shown some ambition in your reading course.”

Teacher’s intuition whispered that she ought to appeal to his sense of pride by commending his initiative. Feminine suspicion warned her not to plunge headlong after what was in all likelihood a ruse. “What do you think of Colonel Hudibras’s adventures thus far?”

She waited, in smug assurance that he would hem and haw with embarrassment and in the end admit he hadn’t read a word.

“It’s interesting enough reading, I suppose.”

Leave it to Archer to try bluffing his way out.

Before she could devise a probing question to expose his ignorance, he continued. “I don’t think much of the colonel, truth be told. Treats that squire of his something shameful. When he made Ralpho take that whipping in his place, I wanted to leap into the book and throttle the blackguard.”

There could be no denying his violent indignation. Morse’s emphatic brows knit together and his jaw jutted forward. He had read the material, after all. What’s more, he had been moved by it.

The notion tugged at Leonora and would not let her go.

In a flash Morse’s umbrage changed to chagrin. “I’ve known too many ranking idiots like Colonel Hudibras in my day,” he muttered. For the first time that morning, his gaze faltered before hers.

“I dislike the character quite as intensely as you do, Sergeant Archer,” she confessed, taking a seat beside him. What galled her was the colonel’s mercenary pursuit of the widow. Like Morse, she had known too many loathsome creatures of that ilk. “Read on and I promise you’ll enjoy the part where he gets his comeuppance.”

“That I shall.” He leafed through the volume searching for his place.

“Would it surprise you to hear that the author is no fonder of Hudibras than we are?” Leonora pulled her chair closer to his. “It was Mr. Butler’s intent to satirize the Puritans, who had ruled England after the defeat of King Charles the First.”

Morse looked up from the book. “Are you saying there was a time we had no king?”

A lively discussion sprang up between them, about the history of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth and the eventual restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Then they went on to consider the nature of satire and its origins in the Greek literary tradition.

Leonora could scarcely believe it when Dickon gave a tentative knock on the sitting room door and inquired whether they wished to take breakfast that morning, after all. She glanced at the mantel clock, amazed to discover the hands within a few minutes of ten.

“I apologize, Sergeant Archer,” she stammered. “I had no idea the time had gotten away from me to such an extent. You’ll be starved.”

He appeared almost as surprised by the hour as she. “I am hungry,” he confessed. “Though I can’t say I noticed it until this minute. I fear I got caught up in your talk. You have a knack for making this dry-as-dust history and literature come to life, Miss Freemantle.”

His dark eyes glowed with admiration. Some long dormant feminine faculty within Leonora assured her it was quite genuine.

Just then she became acutely aware of his knee pressing against hers. How long had that been going on? Even through the substantial fabric of her skirt and his buckskin breeches, it had kindled a warmth between them. A rush of that warmth wafted from Leonora’s knee to her thighs.

She almost toppled the chair in her haste to put a safe distance between them.

“We had better get to breakfast before everything is stone cold or burned to a crisp.” She gasped the words, hard-pressed to catch her breath. “I fear Cook will be cross with us.”

She fled to the breakfast room before Morse Archer could reply. By the time he sauntered in, she had regained at least a crumb of her composure. Still, she was too flustered to correct his mess hall manners.

Several times he spoke with his mouth full. He ate bits of ham off the point of his knife. Over coffee, he hunched forward, resting his elbows upon the table. Had she made no headway at all with him in the past fortnight?

For all her disquiet on that score, Leonora had to admit their late breakfast was the most pleasant meal she had passed in his company.

One of the most pleasant she had ever passed, come to that.

Morse Archer picked up the thread of their prior conversation, plying her with any number of thoughtful, pertinent questions about the roots of the English Civil War and its effect upon the Scottish uprising of the last century. Evidently he had been listening to her and retaining what he’d learned. What made this morning’s lesson so different from those of the past two weeks?

Could it be because…?

Leonora could not deny the eagerness with which he hung on her words. The strange, piquant way he gazed at her from time to time. Was it possible he had taken a fancy to her?

She came to herself with a start, realizing he had just spoken to her. Really, she would have to exercise a good deal more self-control from now on.

“I asked if you would care for another splash of coffee, Miss Leonora.”

“I—” No other words would come just then. He had spoken her Christian name for the first time, each syllable gliding off his tongue like spiced honey. She had never thought a word could sound so beautiful.

“Yes—p-please,” she finally managed to stammer, though the prim schoolmistress within her protested. The beverage was a stimulant, after all. The last thing she needed at the moment was further stimulation.