Something Old, Rebecca Connolly [ebook reader for laptop TXT] 📗

Thomas laughed as he dismounted, the sound invigorating her further still. “I can honestly say, my dear, that I would never have expected to hear you say any such thing after the day we’ve had.”

“No?” she asked with a laugh herself, coming around the horse to meet him. “You think I only find enjoyment in balls, in finery, or in gatherings of high Society guests? Or only in my music?”

“No,” he said slowly, smiling at her suggestions. “But you must admit that there is a vast difference between your standard daily activities and inspecting a mine or picnicking with local villagers.”

Lily grinned, comparing the two types of scenes in her mind. “Yes, as with any lady of breeding and fortune, but I see no reason why I should be restricted to only the standard expectations of ladies. What if I had an interest in the sea, or in farming, or the law? Should I ignore those interests simply because it is unseemly for them to become hobbies of mine? Or limit my association to only those admitted into Almack’s?”

Thomas’s smile turned playful, though it was a softer version of it. “You are full of surprises, are you not, Mrs. Granger?”

Something about the tone of his voice made her fingers tingle and her lips buzz. A ticklish warmth that rolled about within her, spreading into fingers and kneecaps, the backs of her shoulders and the tips of her hair. Her heart began an unsteady pattern, and it was all she could do to keep her smile from turning swoony or shaking entirely.

“Are you fond of surprises, Mr. Granger?”

“I could be,” he replied, shrugging almost nonchalantly, though the tempting tone of his voice had not altered a jot. He glanced toward Pendrizzick, then back at her. “Are you tired? Do you wish to retire?”

“I’m feeling rather invigorated at the moment,” Lily told him with real honesty, as her energy seemed to be growing the more time she spent in his company.

She might have been thinking about a rest when she first saw Pendrizzick on their approach, but seeing the light in Thomas, seeing how the day’s activities had energized rather than depleted him, and, perhaps most of all, seeing how changed he appeared in the more relaxed and now dirty clothing he presently wore, she could honestly say she was not tired in the least.

Her husband was impossibly handsome when attired thus.

His hair a mess, his cravat gone, his linen shirt open at the throat, his coat dust-covered… Even the stubble at his chin suited him perfectly, and this wild look set her heart aflame. The less he looked like the perfect gentleman, the more she felt herself drawn to him. He seemed so approachable, so easy, so unfettered from cares and concerns that she almost couldn’t believe that he was her husband. Except that he was her husband, vibrantly so at this moment, and that knowledge thrummed deeply in her core.

As though he knew what he was doing to her, Thomas laughed softly and ambled closer to her. “If that is so, I wonder if you might be interested in accompanying me for a stroll along Dandrea Beach.”

Lily stared at him, blinking owlishly. Dandrea Beach was on the estate lands, but it was no simple walk. It would require them traipsing the paths along the moors and through at least two fields. “That will take ages,” she told him, feeling the need to remind him of the extraordinary distance. “We’ll barely be home before we must go to bed.”

Thomas was undeterred and shrugged. “So we’ll ask for a packed supper. Once we go back into our house, we go back to duties and responsibilities and being who we have been. I’m not ready to return to that, are you?”

The question robbed Lily of her thoughts for a number of heartbeats. He was right; though Pendrizzick was not their home, there was no denying that by being within her walls, they would inhabit the positions they had carved out for themselves. Perhaps not to the same degree as they had done in the past, at Rainford or in London, but they would do so. The distance they had grown so accustomed to maintaining could creep in once more.

Proper, polite, staid, and separate. That was what their marriage had entailed. But this man before her, this easy, warm, playful man knew nothing of distance or separation, of polite appearances or tedium.

She would go anywhere with him.

“It would be wild and reckless,” she murmured, not finding it within her to protest, only to express the notion.

He nodded slowly, his eyes dark. “Come be wild and reckless with me, Lily.”

If a soul could sigh, hers did so then. Her smile was almost breathless, taking on the faint edge to her breathing that sent her heart skittering like a leaf on a breeze. “All right. Let’s ask Mrs. Penrose to have a basket prepared.”

Fearing he would change his mind, she bolted for the house and sent a maid to find the housekeeper. It seemed that Mrs. Clare was a most accommodating cook, for it was only a handful of minutes later that the basket supper appeared, fully stocked. With it came the offer to have a footman take the basket down to the beach in advance and have it all prepared for their arrival.

Lily politely declined. The less intervention involved in this endeavor, the better.

She restrained the urge to check her appearance in a looking glass, fearing she appeared a right mess, and proceeded out of Pendrizzick. Thomas leaned casually against the stables, seeming perfectly at ease amid his state and the powerful breeze that forever penetrated Cornwall.

Lily held up the basket in delight. “All ready for us! The staff at Pendrizzick really are the most efficient bunch, and I didn’t receive any askew glances when I told them what we were about.”

“I should say not,” Thomas protested playfully as he straightened. “There is no excuse for anyone to ever look at you askew.