The first novel in my Romance with Color Trilogy!
If You Asked the Devil to Dance
“Tell me how to get in,” Jonathan heard himself say.
Lady Kit picked her way over the knotted roots at the base of the tree. She came to stand before him, her body arched in careless invitation. The simple tucks of her shift revealed nothing and yet his body raged. But damn, her disrespect for his personal space put coherent thoughts outside his ability.
“Do you know how to climb a tree?” she whispered, her voice a sultry caress over his cheek. Prickles of awareness rose in infinitesimal bumps along his neck. Jonathan gave himself an inward shake, outwardly displaying nothing of his unease. She isn’t actually whispering in your ear, a saner part of his anatomy observed. She is having a perfectly normal conversation with a man having perfectly inappropriate thoughts about her.
Cease your nonsense! he told the voice. That is utterly ridiculous.
Is it?
The voice laughed at his pause. Jonathan scowled, his mood soured by a truth that should have stayed buried, and the voice cackled on. You are missing it, you silly dolt. She’s propositioning you!
The voice was right. Jonathan returned to her conversation in time to hear, “If you cannot climb a tree I suppose we should begin our lessons there.”
“I know how to climb a tree,” he said, quitting that unflattering assessment with a slice of his hand through crisp fall air. Whether or not he should was an entirely different question, and one whose answer he was likely to debate for a long while. His mood, already turned, now curdled. How dare she make things harder for him than they already were?
“Let me see,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“English, Lord Rader. It is what we are practicing all the time.”
Jonathan frowned at her presumption and unfolded himself from the tree trunk. He wiped stray bark from his superfine and tugged at his cuffs before shooting her a quelling look. “There is nothing wrong with my English, for the record. Good Lord, it is hardly my fault if your proposal is so ridiculous it may as well have been issued from Rupert’s tail end. My poor brainbox can scarcely follow your logic, so do excuse me if I require a little repetition now and then.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and leveled her brown eyes upon him. “It’s a big tree. I need to know you can make it. Otherwise, I will climb the tree up to your room.”
Jonathan choked, his anger disappearing in a whiff of disbelief. “You can’t be serious!” He heaved a few coughs for emphasis, expelling the last of his reservation along with his sanity. The competitive streak that had seen him through Eton, the one that sought to prove he was better than Society’s low opinion of him, reared itself to accept her challenge. He straightened beneath her unwavering scrutiny, and gave the voice madly protesting in his head very firm orders to cease and desist. “My lady, my honor has been impinged upon. A race, then. To the top of the tree.”
Yellow and mahogany-red maple leaves were piled in drifts around Lady Kit, lending her a fiery wantonness, as if she were a sprite come to tempt him to naughty tricks. She laughed, furthering the effect. A clear sound, it rang like chiming bells at Christmastide or some other such nonsense. The bells were an invitation the less judicious part of his anatomy readily accepted, and he tensed in anticipation of her answer.
“You are very strange, Lord Rader. If you insist, I am happy to show you how it feels to lose. That tree for you.” She indicated the oak behind him. “And…” she looked around the clearing and pointed to an apple tree of similar height, “this tree for me.”
Jonathan offered her a court bow. “I have already had the pleasure of losing to you. Today I will show you how it feels to lose to me.” He bent over and hobbled on one foot, tugging at his boot. The blasted thing didn’t budge, a fact that would please his valet immensely. Evans prided himself on the snug fit of his master’s clothing, much to Jonathan’s daily discomfort.
Lady Kit plopped down in front of him. Her knees settled into the thick grass and her braid fell over her breasts. Distracted by that fortunate tress he didn’t have the presence of mind to stop her before she wrapped her hands around his Hessian and yanked.
“You can’t help—Bloody hell, woman!” The exclamation was lost as he landed on his bottom with a loud oomph. She held up his boot triumphantly. Wasting no time a’tall, she readily divested him of his left Hessian and tossed it to the side with its mate.
Of this, Jonathan knew Evans would not approve.
“My valet is going to murder me,” he said under his breath. Still, he wiggled his toes in his stockings, damning such annoyances as grass stains and propriety.
Kit jumped up and held out a hand. “Come,” she said, beckoning with her fingers. Reluctantly, he allowed her to assist him from the ground. Blast, but he’d better win this thing. His confidence would be shot, otherwise.
She abandoned him to skip to her apple tree. Reaching two hands to a low branch, she waited patiently for him to find his hand hold. When he was ready he looked to her and nodded. Then he called out, “On the count of three. One, two—”
“Nithese!”
Her vowel-heavy cry could only mean three or go. Either way, he could use a head start. Up the tree he went. Less-used muscles protested when he strained to reach a higher branch or gain a firmer foothold. Dry leaves rattled their encouragement as the tree dipped and snapped under his weight. After fifteen or so feet he wondered if he shouldn’t have been more specific as to what constituted the top. Branches shot out in all directions, and like a spider’s web, the haphazard arrangement offered a myriad of choices. He opted to follow the trunk as closely as possible and refused to look down when he sensed he was higher up than he had supposed from the ground.
Indescribable victory flooded him when he popped up through the last smattering of leaves. The countryside stretched green and brown before him, turning down into the valley where the village of Little Bingford rested between the great estates of Willowsbury and Whidbey. On all sides, rolling land meandered its way to haze-kissed hills in the distance.
A bird swooped low over his head. Its angry caw made Jonathan laugh.
“Are you hungry?” Kit’s voice came from everywhere at the same time. He looked in the direction of her tree. Or rather, where he thought her tree was. The autumn leaves and forked branches of the copse top melted into each other from his vantage.
The observation made him a bit giddy. “Why do you ask?” he returned, and then ducked as an apple whizzed by his head. “Ho, now! That was uncalled for!” Jonathan searched for something to launch back at her, but not only could he not find anything larger than a twig, he had no idea where she was. “Show yourself, vixen!” he demanded.
A tinkle alerted him to the tree behind. Jonathan carefully repositioned himself. True to his theory, he saw her. Morning light glinted off her black hair, tinted her face a creamier brown. Suddenly he was thankful thirty feet and two trees separated them. Suddenly—suddenly he wondered why he hadn’t thought to make a bet with her.
His win for her kiss.
The notion fell like cold water on his flesh. Reality. He must focus on reality. But what was reality when one was standing in his stockings in a tree? The smile wiped from his face. He could not sneak into her office, even if he bloody well could climb her tree.
Backing down proved more difficult than climbing up. When his feet finally touched the ground he collected his boots and found a respectable stump on which to sit while he drew them on. This entire escapade had been ridiculous. What devil had made him do something so foolish? So dangerous? So invigorating?
Her soft leather shoes appeared in his line of sight. Directing his scowl at the ground, he avoided looking up at her face as long as possible. He had been right about her. London might cave to an Incomparable—what did he know? He was the last authority on popularity—but he needed a different kind of woman. One who wouldn’t go out of her way to land him in awkward situations. One who didn’t make him feel like he had just strangled her puppy.
She seemed to sense his frustration. A breeze teased the trees and her quiet compliment was muffled by its path. “You are more skilled than I believed, elene, but you are also correct. Do not take a risk for me. I came here without knowing you. Without you, I will find another way.”
And then she left.
