Bronwyn Scott – Unbuttoning The Innocent Miss (страница 9)

Apparently ‘point of interest’ meant something different to Lashley, though. This was the eighth time now he’d made the trip and, while it was something of a treat to watch those broad shoulders in blue superfine and those long legs sporting tan breeches sans tea stains walk across the room in a pair of highly polished boots, it wasn’t helping her cause or his.

She wanted to push him into his chair and yell, ‘Sit down and look at me!’ Not only because she’d worn this ridiculous dress just for him, but she couldn’t very well use the tips May and Beatrice had given her for attracting a man’s attention if he was forever walking away. He had to sit in order for her to lean over the table and point out something in the book. He had to sit in order for her to stand behind him so that her breasts might brush his shoulder as she pointed something out. The operative word in all of these suggestions was ‘sit’, of course, an assumption she had felt safe in making an hour ago, not so now. It was all good advice, Claire was certain, if she ever got to use it. None of her friends’ tips dealt with a man who acted like a jack in the box.

How did he expect her to uphold her end of the proposition if he wouldn’t uphold his? He’d asked for her help and she couldn’t give it if he wouldn’t sit still. She couldn’t very well teach him French if he wouldn’t read the sentences from the book and do the lesson she provided.

But a lady did not screech like a fishwife in the presence of a man she wanted to impress. Still, good manners and playing by the rules had got her very little in the way of progress today. Claire shot a frantic glance at the clock. Their time would be up and they would have accomplished nothing. Lashley would think she was incompetent. The realisation spurred on the last of her reserves. Whatever else she was, she knew she was an accomplished linguist and she would prove it. Claire drew a deep breath, calling on the final remnants, nay, the last shreds of her patience. ‘Let’s try again, Mr Lashley.’ She crossed the room to the window, book in hand, muttering under her breath. ‘Dağ sana gelmezse, sen dağa gideceksin.’

‘What did you say?’ Lashley’s head jerked away from the window, startled at the words. At last something had caught his interest and it hadn’t been French. Of course. That was how her luck had been lately.

‘I said, “If the mountain won’t come to you, you must go to the mountain”. It’s from The Essays of...’

‘Francis Bacon, I know. But Bacon wrote his essays in English,’ Lashley finished. ‘Turkish would be my guess.’

‘Yes, you’re correct. Most people don’t recognise Turkish.’ That he did was pleasantly surprising but it didn’t make up for the fact that he couldn’t focus on his lesson. He was a grown man, used to long meetings about estates and ledgers, there was nothing drier. Why couldn’t he focus on French which was anything but dull?

‘And yet you speak it, Miss Welton? Is it one of your four languages?’ He was watching her now, his sharp blue eyes on her face. He’d remembered May’s carefully placed titbit from dinner. She flushed, pleased that he’d recalled something about her.

‘It will hopefully be my fifth. Since the Ottoman Empire appears destined to demand British attention, it seemed prudent to pick up the skill.’ Maybe this was the opening she needed. She leaned forward, pointing to the page and hopefully displaying a pleasing expanse of bosom. ‘We’re not here to learn Turkish, Mr Lashley. Perhaps we might try the French sentences again? Read the first one, si’l vous plait.’

Lashley drew a breath. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly ‘Ow est lee salon?’

There it was, the second reason this lesson was a disaster, in terrible ear-splitting reality; Lashley was horrible. As if his attention deficit wasn’t problem enough, Lashley’s French sounded awful when he did try. Suffice it to say, she’d taught younger children French with more success than she was having here. Abysmal didn’t even begin to cover it. Praise was a good way to encourage success, but what could she say about this? ‘All right, it sounded like a question, that’s good. It was meant to be one.’

Lashley saw right through the comment. ‘I’m not a child, Miss Welton. Lying to me won’t help. You make it sound so easy. I look at the words and I see what they mean, but I can’t say them, not like you.’

‘Not yet anyway,’ Claire insisted. She couldn’t stand the look of resignation that crept across his face. ‘We simply have to practise.’

Lashley moved away from the window and ran a hand through his hair. He shook his head. ‘I have been practising. For years. I’m sorry, Miss Welton, to have wasted your time. This simply isn’t going to work.’

He was leaving? No. Unacceptable. She was not losing him after one lesson. If Beatrice was willing to brazen out having a baby with no father, perfect Jonathon Lashley could learn to speak French and she could teach him. But she had to act fast. He was already halfway to the door. Something fiery and stubborn flared inside Claire. He was not leaving this room. Claire strode across the room—no, wait, who was she kidding? She was nearly running to beat him to the door. The rules could go hang.

She fixed herself in the doorway, hands on hips to take up the entire space, blocking the exit. He would not elude her. ‘I never figured you for a quitter, Mr Lashley, or perhaps you have simply never met with a challenge you could not immediately overcome?’

‘Do you know me so well as to make such a pronouncement?’ Lashley folded his arms across his chest, his eyes boring into her. This was a colder, harsher Jonathon Lashley than the one she knew. The laughing golden boy of the ton had been transformed into something dangerously exciting. Her pulse raced, but she stood her ground.

What ground it was! She’d never been this close to him before; so close she had to look up to see his face, so close her breasts might actually brush the lapels of his coat without any contrivance on her part, so close she could smell his morning soap, all cedar and sandalwood and entirely masculine, entirely him. She’d waited her whole life to stand this close to Jonathon Lashley and, of course, it was her luck that when it happened it was because of a quarrel—a quarrel she’d provoked.

She’d never thought she’d fight with him, the supposed ‘man of her dreams’. She’d been thinking ‘never’ a lot since this all started. Yesterday, she’d never thought they would have desperation in common. Today, she’d never dreamed his French would be this bad, or that she’d have trouble teaching him or that she’d quarrel with him.

‘You are a very bold woman, Miss Welton.’ His tone was one of cold caution. ‘Yesterday you mopped up my trousers and today you are preventing me from leaving a room. One can only wonder what you might do to my person next. Perhaps tomorrow I will find myself tied to a chair and at your mercies.’

Claire flushed violently. The rather descriptive words conjured hot images of just how that might look and the mercies she might indeed invoke flooded her mind in vivid colour. Jonathon bound, his perfect cravat undone, his shirt open, those long legs wrapped about the chair, his thighs spread wide, his tight breeches unable to disguise what lay between them. Sweet heavens, where was her fan when she needed it? Where was her self-restraint? Those were thoughts for the dark of night when she was alone in her bed. But it was bright day and he was standing right in front of her, present for every one of them.

That was outside of enough. She had to stop. Claire put a tight lid on the images and stuffed them back inside whatever Pandora’s box they’d sprung from. This was all his fault, every scrap and speck of it from the disastrous lesson to the heated imaginings of rope tricks involving knots and a gentleman who wasn’t necessarily wearing clothes.

‘You asked for it!’ Claire’s temper snapped. Where had that come from? She hadn’t been this bold in years. She’d thought she’d forgotten how. Apparently not. She could lay her boldness, too, at the altar of his provocation. He was going to damn well be accountable for all of it. Great. He had her swearing now as if erotic fantasies of tying him to a chair in the middle of her father’s dusty library wasn’t enough. ‘You wanted my help and you shall have it. You need me if you have any chance of claiming that post in Vienna!’

She ruthlessly gripped his arm and turned him around, dragging him back to the window, the furthest point from the door. If he was going to run, she’d have plenty of warning, and if he couldn’t sit still, then she wouldn’t belabour it. Chairs might not be the best idea just now anyway and she had to pick her battles. ‘Now, we’re going to go through the sentences again. This time, all you have to do is watch my mouth. Do you think you can manage that?’

* * *

Probably not. He hadn’t managed to do anything right since the lesson started. He’d made an apparently lurid comment about chairs and provoked a lady to an unladylike show of temper and it was all her fault. Watching her mouth was what had caused the problem in the first place. What the hell was wrong with her? This was not the Miss Welton he knew, assuming he knew her at all?