‘That would have been more polite,’ Rosseter put in.
Ardmore bowed and motioned to her.
She moved forward, aware of the two men watching her intently. She shook her curls back over her shoulders; they could be distracting. Then she pulled the bow back, slowly, slowly. She could feel her breasts coming forward and up, straining from the bodice of her muslin gown. Finally she let the arrow slip and it sailed home. It was slightly off its target because she’d held the arrow too long.
Ardmore took her place. He drew back the bow just as slowly as she had. Broad shoulders flexed, and he flashed a glance at her. His eyes were almost – almost – guileless, but not quite. She nearly burst out laughing but instead she gave him a delicious smile, one of her very best. For a moment he looked as if he’d been clopped in the forehead. She stepped back. Unless she’d missed her bet, he had held that arrow too long, and his elbow was jutting high again.
Sure enough, he missed the target altogether.
Lady Mitford popped up in front of them, beaming happily. ‘I do so love it when my guests fall into the spirit of the times!’ she trilled. ‘Now Lord Mitford and I have a most lovely surprise for the two of you.’
She beckoned wildly with her arm and a flower-covered pony cart came into view, being dragged along by two miserable-looking donkeys. Flowers had been woven into their manes and tucked behind their ears.
‘You shall be the King and Queen of May!’ Lady Mitford said happily. ‘Of course, it isn’t quite May yet, but we thought this was so appropriate to our festival. Lord Mitford and I had planned to be the king and queen ourselves, but since the two of you entered so fully into the spirit of the day, we looked at each other and with one breath, we decided to crown you instead!’
Griselda was laughing and clapping her hands, so Lady Mitford’s suggestion must be acceptable from a chaperone’s point of view. Annabel hesitated but Ardmore took the decision from her. Without pausing to ask her, he put his hands around her waist and swung her into the pony cart. She gasped but the next second he was in the seat next to her, and the trumpets were blowing again. Lady Mitford handed up a wreath of flowers.
‘You must do it,’ Ardmore said to her, sotto voce. ‘Look how happy it’s making her!’
Surely enough, Lady Mitford was cackling with pleasure.
‘There’s something wrong, though,’ Ardmore said. He narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t look exactly right.’ Suddenly his hand darted out and with an unerring touch he pulled three hairpins from her hair.
Annabel gasped. Her hair fell down around her shoulders, rolls of soft golden curls that had taken her maid a full hour to pin to her head. ‘How dare you!’ she said, looking up at him.
But he was settling the wreath of white flowers back on her head. ‘Hush,’ he said. ‘You’re a queen.’
His thigh brushed against hers as the donkeys started off with a jerk around the garden.
‘This is so humiliating,’ she hissed at him.
But he was grinning broadly. They began a circuit of the garden, Annabel smiling at all the guests and silently cursing her companion. Lord Rosseter looked up at the cart and then turned away. Annabel added a particularly virulent curse to her silent tirade. But actually, she wasn’t terribly worried about Rosseter. He would come back, if she wished him to. Or he wouldn’t, and she’d find someone else. His censoriousness was a bit worrying.
Then they were back at the beginning, and Lady Mitford was begging to send the cart around the back of the house. ‘It’s just to show the household. They all take such interest in our little Renaissance festival, bless their hearts. I know they’d want to see the king and queen.’
So Ewan sent the donkeys around the back of the house as commanded. But it seemed Lady Mitford had misjudged the enthusiasm of her household, for there wasn’t a soul to be seen, just curtains drawn against the afternoon sun. The donkeys stopped and began chomping on a rosebush that flanked the kitchen door.
‘Perhaps she’s alerting the staff to our presence this very moment,’ Ewan suggested. There was something about Annabel that made him feel reckless, as if champagne were pouring through his veins.
She folded her hands primly. ‘I believe we should turn the cart about. It’s not proper for us to be alone.’
He put down the reins. No man of blood and bone would turn down this opportunity. That wasn’t innocence he glimpsed in Annabel’s eyes, but awareness of him as a man. And Ewan was a man of action, rather than words.
He lowered his head so slowly that she had time to squeak, or say no, as proper maidens did when they were about to be kissed. But she didn’t say a word, just looked at him with smoky blue eyes.
His lips brushed hers. They were soft, like the petals of the roses the donkeys were eating, and he wanted to eat her, all of her…He rubbed his lips across hers again, stronger now. But she didn’t say anything, or make a sound, so he let his lips wander down from that little curve in the corner of her mouth, thinking of her neck, that creamy soft neck, but he didn’t want to leave. So he came back and she parted her lips a little and he slipped in between one breath and the next.
And then he had her in his arms, cradling her, and the air was thick with the smell of roses and their tongues were tangling. Her mouth was hot and not at all like that of an innocent maiden but rather – He pushed aside the memory of his first kiss with Bess, a friendly milkmaid. Because this kiss was nothing like Bess’s, had nothing in common with Bess’s…
Annabel had her arms around his neck before she knew what was happening, before she realised that her heart was beating so rapidly that she couldn’t breathe – that must be why she couldn’t breathe – because she couldn’t. Breathe, that is. Not with the way he was kissing her, as if time had stopped and there was nothing left in the world but the King and Queen of May and a cart full of flowers.
Perhaps it was because he was Scots. He kissed long and slow, and there was none of the jostling sense she’d had from Englishmen, as if they kissed while thinking about how to get hold of one of her breasts and wring it like a pump handle. Ardmore’s hands were on her back, but they hadn’t moved since drawing her close, and he didn’t seem to have anything else in mind than the slow tangle of their tongues. It was almost maddening.
In fact, it was maddening. Annabel had been in London for precisely two months, and she’d already been kissed by several men. All of whom punctiliously asked Rafe for her hand in marriage. But their kisses were enough to make her reject their proposals. They pawed and breathed hard, and she couldn’t see sharing a bed with someone who sounded asthmatic.
As far as she could see, Ardmore had the opposite response to her. Here they were, just sitting and kissing, and kissing, and her blood was racing but he seemed as calm as ever. He had those great labourer’s hands spread on her back but he didn’t pull her close to him. And yet she – she – she felt boneless and as if she were about to slump against his chest.
The inequality was unnerving. She pulled back. When he opened his eyes, she revised her idea that he was untouched by the kiss, because there was something deep and hot in his eyes that sent a tingle straight down her thighs. ‘We must return,’ she said, keeping her hands around his neck.
He didn’t even say anything, just smiled his lazy Scottish smile and
