My Saving Grace Page 8

  * * *

  Grace had risen early. She did not want to be late for her first lesson and was eager to undo or at least repair the damage she had done to her own reputation— let alone Captain Ponsonby’s estimation of her— with the debacle she had made of things the day before.

  She hurried down to the lake, her maid Polly, sleepy and grumbling about the early hour, tagging in her wake and carrying a blanket. Their footsteps left a darker trail in dewy, silvered grass. Grace had tried to wake Hannah, who had fallen back asleep three times, mumbling something incoherent. Polly, equally somnolent but less likely to argue with her or present some sensible suggestion that would only sour things, had been brought along instead. She would be an adequate chaperone, Grace thought, even if she were likely to fall back asleep the moment she spread the blanket out on the grass.

  Sleep, however, was the furthest thing from Grace’s mind. She was going to learn to sail today. Properly, that is. And she had a willing and competent instructor.

  What could go wrong?

  The pond was glassy smooth. In the early morning quiet, a swan, long neck gracefully tucked, looked like a decoy on its surface. Thin sunlight sparkled briefly on the water, throwing diamonds as the gentlest of breezes began to stir.

  Mr. Lord was nowhere to be found.

  “I’ll just sit right here if ye don’t mind, Lady Grace?”

  “Go ahead, Polly. It seems my instructor isn’t here yet, anyhow.”

  Grace pulled her skirts to one side and sat down on the damp foredeck of the skiff that had brought her to such grief yesterday. Hopefully Mr. Lord hadn’t forgotten her or thought better of her request. Maybe he was still asleep.

  But movement off in the distance caught her eye and looking up, Grace spotted a tall, lean figure headed her way from the house.

  Her heart gave a little leap of excitement, a quick movement that strummed the blood through her veins like a finger plucking the string of a guitar. It was an odd sensation, that, and one she hadn’t expected.

  Even if Mr. Lord did cut rather a fine figure in the morning sunlight.

  He walked with an easy, confident stride, shoulders back and spine as straight as the wall of a house. His crisp white shirt shone in the morning sunlight, and a snug, well-cut waistcoat of plum linen, double-breasted and smart, accented the breadth of his shoulders and the trimness of his waist and hips. As he approached, Grace saw that his steady gray eyes had a hint of purple in them, though whether that was their natural color or a reflection from his vest, she would not have been able to say. He bowed, nodded to a heavy-lidded Polly, and smiled wryly.

  “Unless you can conjure some wind, I fear our lesson may not be very productive,” he said, looking at the water’s still surface.

  “It’s better now than it was fifteen minutes ago.”

  “You were here then?”

  “I’ve been here for a while. I didn’t want to be late.”

  “And here I’m the one who is late.”

  “No, Mr. Lord. You are right on time.”

  He smiled again, and rubbed at his jaw. It was cloaked with a dark shadow, and she wondered what kind of rogue he must be to have come out without shaving, though she had to admit that it gave him a rather dangerous, darkly handsome look that was not unattractive. He bent to untie the boat from the rock to which it was tethered and despite herself, Grace noticed the breadth of his shoulders and the way the breeze, just awakening, tickled his hair, slightly overlong, wildly curly, thick and unruly.

  Why are you noticing Mr. Lord?

  He’s nothing but your sailing teacher for the morning.

  Right. She looked away, studying the swan instead. The regal white bird had now been joined by its mate and several cygnets, and now the little family moved out into the center of the lake, a thin line behind them marking their discreet wake. The cob’s head had turned slightly, watching them.

  “The first thing one must do,” Mr. Lord was saying, “is to study the weather before deciding whether or not it is prudent to take a boat out. Determine the direction of the wind, as well as the strength, and then judge whether you are skilled enough to take on that strength.”

  “Obviously, yesterday, I was not.”

  “You were not, but sailing is a skill just like any other, and while I can teach you a rudimentary understanding of it, the best instructor is experience.” He straightened up, still holding the rope that had tethered the little craft to the rock, and smiled. “That is, what we’ll call ‘tiller time’.”

  “Tiller time.”

  Their gazes met, and both quickly looked away. Something had been in that quick, electric contact, something that neither would acknowledge, though both understood exactly what it was.

  Attraction.

  Grace swallowed the sudden dryness in her throat and briskly rubbed her hands together, determined to ignore it. “Well, then, Mr. Lord. Let’s get started.”

  He would not look at her. “Yes. Let’s.”

  14

  “And which direction is the wind coming from?” Del repeated patiently.

  The young lady looked at him blankly. She had the Falconer eyes, a deep azure blue, and hers were thickly fringed in black and topped by delicately arched brows. She would be a rather elegant creature, Del thought, if not for her innate talent for getting herself into trouble and her bright, bubbly spirit.

  “Well?” he prompted.

  She looked over her shoulder, turned, and pointed. “That way.”

  It was now Del’s turn to look at his pupil blankly. “That way?”

  “Well, yes. That’s where the wind is coming from. That way.”

  “What I meant, Lady Grace, is this: From which direction of the compass is the wind coming from?”

  She looked at him with equal patience. “That one.”

  Del shut his eyes, briefly, and resisted the urge to count to ten in order not to give vent to his rising irritation. “Do you even know which direction that one, is?”

  “North?”

  “It is west.”

  “Well, how am I to know that?”

  “You do know that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west?”

  “Well...”

  “And given that it is early morning, and the sun is coming up in that direction—” it was his turn to point —“which most naturally must be east, doesn’t it stand to reason that the opposite direction would be west?”

  “What if it’s cloudy, and one can’t know which direction the sun is rising from?”

  “It is not cloudy.”

  “But it could be.”

  “Lady Grace—”

  “I know, I know. Please go on. I’m keen to get on the water. Can we get started?”

  “We are started. And without a knowledge of direction and wind you will likely end up in the same sorry situation in which you found yourself yesterday.”

  “I fail to understand—”

  “Are we going to have this lesson or not?”

  She shot a glance at her maid, sitting on the blanket watching them in the near distance.

  “Fine. We have established that the sun is coming up from that direction, which means that the wind is coming from the west.”

  “Very good. And given that we are standing here on the shoreline, and the wind is coming over our left shoulders—”

  “The west.”

  “Yes, the west, how do you propose to get the boat out into the lake?”

  “I thought you were going to do that. That you’d get us out into the middle of the lake since you know what you’re doing, and then I’d take over—” she grinned, charmingly— “under your tutelage, of course.”

  Del stood there, the water lapping gently near his shoes, and he invited, no, willed the pastoral quietness of it to soften his rising irritation. He was irritated that he had not risen early enough to complete the morning ablutions necessary for a civilized and respectable appearance. He was irritated with himself for allowing this beautiful creatur
e to talk him into a folly that was destined to benefit yet another rival at the expense of his own heart. And he was irritated that he was irritated because really, it was not gentlemanly to feel, let alone demonstrate, impatience with a gently-bred female.

  Especially one who was his admiral’s niece.

  Really, he should have stayed in bed this morning.

  Why the devil hadn’t he?

  “If you want to impress Captain Ponsonby,” he said tersely, “you need to do more than just take over the boat once someone else gets it out into the middle of the lake. You need to do all of it. Push off, trim the sail, and steer it.”

  She just looked at him.

  “And you need to be able to do it alone.”

  “You’re not going to help me?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. I said that if you wanted to impress a mariner, you must have the skills to be self-sufficient. Just this once, I’ll push us out into the water but next time, you’ll do it all by yourself.”

  Her chin came up. “No, no, I want to do it.”

  “You’ll ruin your slippers.”

  “You just said that if I’m going to do this, I need to learn how to do all of it.” She reached down, bent her leg, pulled off the slipper and tossed it into the grass, revealing shapely feet, long toes, trim ankles and high arches.

  Del’s mouth went dry, and he felt something in his blood kick up and begin to hum.

  He quickly looked away and tried to ignore it, but as the girl pulled off her other slipper and stood there in her stockings on the damp grass, he felt that hum beginning to move into a faint burning that sought a place to lodge itself, that thrummed throughout his body, and finally chose the area of his groin.

  “Well?” she asked.

  I will not look at her feet. I will not. “How do you propose to steer it?”

  “With the tiller.”

  “And where is the tiller?”

  She reddened as she noticed the rudder and tiller were both lying in the hull of the little boat, and it occurred to Del that someone, probably young Ned who couldn’t bear to see a vessel put away improperly, had likely put them there, and coiled the mainsheet as well.

  “Oh,” she said, and sloshing through the water, bent to pick up the rudder and drop it into the slot at the stern. Del stood watching, arms crossed loosely over his chest as she attached the tiller to it, thinking that if she at least knew how to do this much, he had something to work with.

  “There,” she said happily, and looked up.

  “Very good.”

  “Now what?”

  “Attach the mainsheet to the little ring at the clew of the sail.”

  “That rope there?”

  “Yes, the line that runs down through the block at the head of the rudder, and which has been left neatly coiled in the hull.”

  She did as he instructed, the water lapping around her slim, bare ankles. Caressing them. Del looked away, his gaze falling first on the family of swans watching them from nearby, to the maid reposing on the grass. The young woman appeared to be losing her battle to stay awake.

  “Now what?”

  “Let’s get in the boat and go sailing.”

  He moved the boat out into the water just a little bit so that she wouldn’t have to struggle to push it along with his weight through the muddy silt of the shoreline. A stone’s throw away, the swan family had moved off but the parents had their long necks curved, their heads twisted, watching them.

  Del eyed the mud balefully. The girl had the right idea.

  He removed is own shoes, and wished for a moment that he was the common tar she believed him to be. Then he could remove his stockings, too, and wouldn’t be clinging to a sense of propriety that served no purpose at best and was about to ruin his stockings, at worst.

  There was no help for it. His feet, complete with stockings, sank into the muck with a sucking squish that made Del grimace inside, and the pungent scent of mud filled the air.

  He got into the boat and waited.

  “Now what do I do?” Lady Grace asked.

  “Hold the line and—”

  “The line?”

  “That rope that tethered it to the rock. Pick it up, hold onto it, walk the boat back into the pond, and get in.”

  She gingerly picked up the rope with two fingers, her pretty face marred by a grimace of distaste. The sodden hemp was green with slime, damp with mud. She stood there with it, caught his assessing look, and suddenly grinned.

  “It’s wet.”

  “Yes.”

  “And mucky. It smells.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  She put her distaste for the moldering object behind her, sloshed into the water, put a leg over the gunwale and got into the boat, sitting on the thwart beside Del.

  “Now what?”

  Her ankle and a good bit of calf had been exposed by her entry into the craft and the sight of both had seared itself into Del’s mind. He shook his head to clear it and, to get his thoughts off both her and her close proximity to him, picked up the paddle and leveraging it against the bottom, pushed the boat farther out into the little lake, deftly turning it as he did.

  The skiff had a single mast to which a sail was permanently affixed; there was no raising of canvas to be done, and the simplicity of the boat’s design was something he could appreciate.

  “Shouldn’t I be doing that?” she asked.

  “Yes, but I’ll get us clear of obstacles, including that little family of swans, and then you will take over.”

  “I can paddle a boat.”

  “If yesterday was a display of your skills, I beg to differ.”

  “Then all the more reason I should be doing that.”

  He looked at her. “You’re right.” He pulled the dripping oar from the water. “Here.”

  She took the short length of wood and began to paddle. Predictably, the boat began to turn, its stubby nose swinging to starboard, beginning to trace a circle. The girl took up the tiller in hopes of steering it. The boat lost momentum, the rising, still-gentle wind pushing the boom and sail around with helpless abandon.

  Del began to rethink his earlier estimation that there was something here with which to work.

  “If you move yourself to the bow of the boat,” he directed, “and stroke first on the starboard side, and then on the larboard, and repeat that process, you will go in a fairly straight line as long as you exert equal strength on each stroke. You can steer or correct your course by either adding additional strokes to the side from which you wish to turn or, back water with the paddle to get the boat to turn in that direction.”

  She furrowed her brow and looked at him dubiously.

  “Try it,” he suggested, and then, as she began to get to her feet, “don’t stand up.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve no mind to go swimming again today.”

  “What?”

  “Meaning, if you lose our balance and tumble overboard, I’ll have to fish you out again.” As she blushed, he added kindly, “once a week is enough.”

  “Oh.”

  She scooted to the bow of the boat, leaned over the prow, and began to stroke clumsily with the paddle. Behind her, Del watched her shoulders working beneath her soft muslin gown, the long dark tendril of hair that had escaped her loose topknot and now curled enticingly against the little knobs of vertebrae at the base of her neck.

  His fingers itched to touch it.

  Again, he directed his gaze away.

  Her maid was definitely asleep and in the distance, the great stone house slumbered in the early-morning mist, a bar of sunshine now finding the peak of its roof.

  The boat was moving, the girl’s awkward paddling beginning to gain some rhythm, to accomplish some actual purpose. Breaths of wind disturbed the placid surface of the lake, carrying the fresh dewy scent of morning grass and water now that they were well away from the shoreline itself.

  Del found himself smiling.

  “How am I d
oing, Mr. Lord?”

  Her bright eyes, hopeful and confident, lanced something in his gut and his smile spread. Again, he felt a connection with her. A warming.

  He looked away to hide any evidence of it on his face.

  “Quite well. Now, take up the mainsheet and the tiller, and let’s allow the wind to do the work.”

  15

  Curiously, Grace was finding it hard to remember that this lesson was all about learning how to impress Captain Sheldon Ponsonby, and not Mr. Lord, her teacher.

  She had managed to get the boat into the middle of the lake, where the cheerful blue water beneath them was lit by errant beams of sunlight that found their way between the branches of a nearby sycamore.

  Her gaze followed those amber shafts of light into the depths. She had been down there yesterday, down where those beams of sunlight probed, and she would have died down there if not for this man in the boat with her.

  The thought was sobering.

  And it awakened something inside her, something she’d been trying to squash, something she’d been willfully trying to ignore... something she intended quite adamantly for someone else.

  Desire.

  Misplaced, displaced. Unmistakable.

  Desire.

  She watched him out of the corner of her eye, wondering why she was having such a reaction to him. He was nothing like Captain Ponsonby, who was showy, golden, easily confident in his effect on the ladies. Captain Ponsonby knew just when to turn on a smile or offer a compliment, knew he was blessed with extraordinary good looks, and seemed to take for granted his effect on the fairer sex— a trait which, Grace had to admit, only made him more attractive. Confidence was attractive; that was an undeniable fact. This man in the boat with her, though... by comparison, he was quietly understated— perhaps intentionally, she thought— and she got the impression that he was a person who did his job and went about his business dutifully, without a need for attention or accolades and probably not expecting any, either. Unlike Captain Ponsonby, he didn’t command attention in either his behavior or his looks. Not that he wasn’t handsome, she thought with a sudden fierceness, because she had to admit that he was quite handsome indeed in a classically masculine sense. It was just that he wasn’t... what was the word? Ostentatious. Showy. Or even fashionable.