Kiss Me, Annabel

She wasn’t quite certain what he was referring to, but she didn’t inquire. Obviously, haste was an undesirable quality in the bedchamber.

The carriage was drawing to a halt for luncheon when Ewan had his idea. “The goal of this journey is to come to know each other better,” he said, a wicked grin in his eyes. “So I suggest that we make a more concerted effort in that direction.”

“Certainly,” she agreed.

“We’ll ask each other questions.”

“But we already do that,” she objected.

“Difficult questions. And every question that’s answered truly and openly, with honesty here”—he put his hand on his heart—“earns a kiss.”

“So if I don’t answer a question honestly, then there’s no kiss?” she asked.

“None. But you have to ask me questions as well.”

“Who decides whether an answer was honest or not?”

“The person who gave it, of course. I’ll start. Now, Miss Annabel Essex, imagine you’re before the mighty recording angel himself. What is your worst fault?”

“I have none,” she said flippantly.

The footman cast open the door and Ewan handed her out. “And were you honest?” he asked, when she was squarely on her feet, to the side of a charming meadow.

“No,” she said. “Oh, Ewan, isn’t this lovely?”

Mac was there, bowing and clutching a sheaf of papers. “Lord Ardmore, your picnic is set up in the glade just beyond those trees, if you and your ladyship wouldn’t mind walking through the meadow. It is quite dry.”

“Mac, this is lovely!” Annabel said, beaming at him.

“And yourself and the men?” Ewan said.

Mac nodded across the road, quite in the other direction. Annabel could see a rough table set up in the sunshine, with what looked like a keg of ale next to it. “Since we have a long drive before we reach Witham Common, I thought it best if we take a comfortable pause here and perhaps an afternoon rest before continuing. We won’t supper until ten or even later.”

A slow smile spread over Ewan’s face. “Mac, remind me that I am doubling your salary,” he said. And then he offered an arm to Annabel.

For early May, the weather was utterly lovely. The sky was a high, pale blue, like faded linen hung in the sun. Just a few clouds floated high in its arch. The meadow itself was littered with cow parsley whose white flowers stood vividly against new grass. They crossed the meadow and entered a line of alders that divided the meadow from a little glade. Under the alders were bluebells, dark blue, blue flowers hanging their little heads from the beauty of their blossoms.

“Oh, look,” Annabel cried, sinking to her knees and gathering bluebells. “There’s so many of them, I’ve never seen so many!”

Ewan crouched down beside her. “They’re almost the color of your eyes,” he said, holding one up next to her cheek. “No, not quite. You have extraordinary eyes, do you know that?”

She caught a smile back, but it trembled in the air between them. “You’re a flatterer,” she said severely. “I shall ask you for your worst fault, and then be able to judge the truth of your answer for myself.”

He smiled at her, a crooked smile, and didn’t answer. And she had a lap full of bluebells, so she pulled up her skirts before her to hold them and they walked over to the blankets Mac had laid out in the shade of a oak tree. The sun danced through the small leaves of the oak, turning them saffron and dappling the blankets with the ghosts of baby leaves. Ewan very seriously filled all the glasses with bluebells, and gave them water from the stream, so the picnic turned from a very formal affair, all heavy silver and starched linen, to a child’s tea party.

And then he stretched out across from her and Annabel realized that he had hardly said a word since she said she had no faults.

“What is your greatest fault?” she asked him.

“My faults are legion,” he said. “And I think I may be in the process of changing the king, as it were.”

“Oh,” she said, rather disconcerted to find him so serious on the subject. “And what is your newest fault, then, pray?”

“Lust,” he said, and grinned wolfishly at her. “I’ve earned myself a kiss for my honesty.”

She could feel laughter bubbling up in her chest. “That’s a short-lived fault,” she said. “From all I heard from the wives in the village, lust is something a man feels for his wife only briefly, if at all.”

“Not I,” Ewan said, ignoring her jesting tone. “I expect I’ll be lusting for you to the day I meet my Maker.”

Annabel raised an eyebrow, but somehow Ewan seemed immune to sarcastic comments. It was hard to be cynical around him; the words just seemed to die before they could be spoken. So she picked up a dainty cucumber sandwich and ate it.

After a while he still hadn’t said anything, and she was beginning to feel the silence was oppressive, so she said, “I’m not sure that lust even counts as a sin when it’s between a man and his wife. Not that I’m your wife, but—”

“But you will be,” he said. “I was just thinking of the same thing. I’ll have to ask Father Armailhac that.”

“You take the question awfully seriously,” she said.

“We’ve no glass,” he said, handing her an open bottle of white wine.

She looked at him in astonishment. “I can’t drink without a glass.”

“Can’t you? Why not?” He took the bottle back and swung it into the air.

She laughed. “I can’t drink that way.”

“Ladies have a tiresome number of restrictions,” he said, pulling bluebells out of a wineglass and stuffing them into a water glass with a number of their brothers. Then he poured her a glass of wine. “And I do take those questions seriously.”

“Why?” she asked. The wine was lightly sparkling and slipped down her throat with a smell of flowers.

“Why? Because I care for my soul,” he said, drinking from the bottle again.

She stared at him, trying to figure out exactly what he meant. But it was hard to keep her mind on the task. Now she knew how soft his hair felt against her fingers, and the way it curled at the nape. And she knew the feeling of his face when a beard was just beginning, as it was now. And the softness of his lips, the way they turned her weak at the knees and made her collapse into his arms. And his eyes—

“If you look at me like that, lass,” her husband-to-be said quietly, “we’ll have to rely on God’s grace to forgive us for disregarding our vows.”

She blinked. “I was only trying to decide what you meant by your soul,” she said, but she could hear how her voice seemed to have turned husky.

“I meant that I care about my soul,” he said. “There’s no other way to put it, that I can think of. ’Tis a valuable thing God gave me, and I’ve no mind to mar it.”

Annabel frowned and absentmindedly drank the rest of the wine in her cup. “Are you saying that you’re—you’re religious?”

He looked mildly surprised. “I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that, but I suspect the answer is yes.”