“Her Grace is just playing her move with the Duke of Villiers,” Ellen said.
Roberta froze. “Is the duke accompanying us?”
“Of course,” Ellen said, giving her a warm smile. “I’m sure he wouldn’t miss it. He enquired for you yesterday, but you were off with the mermaid. What Master Teddy hasn’t told us about that mermaid!”
The picnic involved not just one flat-bottomed boat, but a whole fleet of them. Roberta climbed into a boat without any difficulty, and Teddy clambered next to her, taking it for granted that the two of them would sit together.
“I have a great deal to tell you,” he said. “I talked to Rummer all morning and—this will really interest you, Lady Roberta—I discovered what a bog-trotting croggie is!”
Jemma almost had to have a boat to herself, given the width of her panniers, and there were a few screams when the Duke of Villiers’s cane caught on the side of the boat and he fell directly into Jemma’s lap.
Roberta had a difficult time keeping her mind on the question of bogs and croggies, because it seemed to her that Villiers took a long time to disentangle himself from Jemma’s lap. In fact, Roberta couldn’t help wondering where her fiancé spent the night. Did his chess game shift to something more intimate?
Mrs. Grope climbed into the boat rather grimly; she was intent on telling the company at large that she was used to large pleasure boats, such as those the Prince of Wales traveled in, though Roberta doubted very much that Mrs. Grope had ever been on a boat at the same time as the prince.
“We played a lovely game of charades aboard His Majesty’s yacht,” she could hear her telling her father. “Why, the girls and I were talking about it last night in the green room…” She looked wistfully into the distance.
Damon settled himself opposite and met her eyes with a grin. “Dollymop charades,” he mouthed.
Roberta couldn’t help giggling. The world was a beautiful place when one was going boating with a lovely, loose-limbed man, who had done such delicious things the night before…She even felt a flash of approval for Villiers and his idea that chastity was an antiquated notion. He was right!
She gave Villiers a huge smile, boat to boat. He seemed rather taken aback, but nodded.
“Too demonstrative,” Damon observed. “You can’t go smiling at your fiancé like that. Smiles, words…those are for ordinary mortals. The two of you should communicate only in nods.”
She turned her nose up at his silliness.
Teddy was eager to talk about a Mr. Swarthy, who often wears brown paper pinned to his white silk stockings. “Do you know why that is, Lady Roberta?”
Teddy had an endearing earnestness about him. His chin was really adorable. It was tiny with a little dimple that mimicked his father’s. “I don’t have any idea,” Roberta said. “I wouldn’t pin brown paper to my legs; would you?”
“He does it in bad weather,” Teddy reported. “And he also sings ‘Fair Dorinda’ in the coffeehouse, and they don’t like it.”
They were drifting down the river. The river was more dappled and green today, sleepy in the sunshine.
“The water sounds like babies talking,” Teddy said.
“I think you’re going to be a novelist,” Roberta told him, listening for the little sleepy murmurs of watery babies.
He beamed and slipped a damp hand into her gloved one. Roberta looked down at his plump fingers and then pulled off her gloves and picked up his hand again.
Mrs. Grope was squealing because a family of ducks was following their boat. For a moment she couldn’t see what was happening, and then she realized that her father had raided the picnic hamper and was dropping cucumber sandwiches into the water.
Jemma and Villiers weren’t even looking at the water; Villiers had a piece of paper and they were scribbling with a pencil and talking. As she watched, Jemma snatched the paper back and wrote something on it.
Damon followed her glance. “Working out a chess game,” he said. “Jemma’s chamber is always filled with pieces of paper covered with imaginary games.”
“How on earth do you write out a chess game?”
“It’s a series of chicken scrawls,” he explained. “BK4, for example, means that someone moved his bishop to King’s Four.”
“Are we going to swim today?” Teddy enquired.
“You are going to swim,” his father said. “Phillips, who is poling the boat with the marquess in it, was kind enough to offer to take you in the water. We’ll drop you off at the mud flats.”
Teddy whooped with joy, and in the resulting mêlée he rocked their boat so much that it would have fallen over except for its wide bottom. A few minutes later they handed him off to a cheerful-looking footman.
“Shall we follow the river all the way to the end today?” Roberta enquired, when Damon settled back into the boat. It had been easy when Teddy was with them, but now she felt prickly and strange because they were alone…alone except for a footman and the cheerful voice of her father in the boat just in front of them. He was reciting a poem that had to do with fish and fins.
Damon sprawled next to her, all easy grace and muscle, and didn’t answer, just picked up her ungloved hand. His thumb played a tune on her wrist, and his touch, that little touch, turned her blood to liquid gold. She couldn’t even look at him, so she looked straight ahead, at the way the shadows flowed over the side of the boat, reflecting off the water in pale sparks of light.
She was wearing a gown of cherry muslin, one of those sewn by Mrs. Parthnell, which meant it was of very simple construction and had no hoops. Her hair was tied up and fell in ringlets; she had blackened her eyelashes. She had never felt prettier in her life.
“What do you do all day?” she asked impulsively. She wanted to know everything about him: what he ate for breakfast, and what he named his mare, and where he met his friends.
“When I’m not making love to you?” His voice was low, so the footman couldn’t hear it.
But a flush struck her face as if she had a sunburn. “Don’t!”
He chuckled, and the low sound of it made her feel breathless. “I own a great deal of property.”
She nodded, trying to fix her mind on property. Of course he did. It was like her father’s eleven peach trees: Damon would have some peach trees of his own. After all, he was an earl. The thought slipped away from her mind and was replaced by a memory of the night before, a memory of how smooth and hot he felt in her hand.
“You see,” he said, “I never could make myself care about chess pieces, but I do like to play with money.”
“Hmm,” she said, and peeked at him.
A slow smile curved one side of his mouth. “Why do I think that you are uninterested in my financial pastimes?”
“I am interested,” she said hastily. But she could feel pink spreading down her bodice. Down to the drawstring that awkwardly separated her bodice from her skirts.
“If you look at me like that,” he said, “I’ll kiss you.”
She couldn’t not look. His green eyes fascinated her. A mere glance from him caused a tender warmth between her legs to blossom. She wanted to giggle—and gasp.
“Damn,” he said, and the back of his hand touched her cheek for a moment. Then he stretched, his arms suddenly flashing up into the air. But the footman behind them was balanced on the small platform at the back of the boat, wielding the great pole.