They did not share Allegra’s passion for the pianoforte, but she was pleased to report that Dorcas and Portia could indeed be labeled “accomplished” at the instrument. They did not invent tunes of their own, but enjoyed learning Allegra’s creations as much as the classics.
In fact, there was one memorable occasion when she… they… um…
Not-Captain L’Amour was just ahead on the beach.
All thoughts of pianofortes tumbled from Allegra’s head. The only music she wanted to make was with—wait. She was still calling him Not-Captain L’Amour? She’d spent one third of a country dance in conversation with the sinfully attractive man, and she’d failed to enquire his actual name?
The broadsheet in her hands was the only thing preventing Allegra from dropping her face into her palms at the missed opportunity.
Well, she would have another chance…wouldn’t she? He was heading this way. Which did not at all mean that he was coming to her. He’d had an entire night to sleep on the folly of yesterday. All morning to repent tangling himself in her schemes, if only for the length of a country-dance.
She would not blame him if he walked right past her. After all, that’s what everyone else had always done, unless there was some service they required of her. Chaperonage, music lessons, seamstress, maid, nanny, governess, accompanist.
What could she offer Not-Captain L’Amour but a headache?
Brighton positively teemed with prettier, younger, wealthier women. Actual ladies. The sort who wore expensive walking dresses where both sleeves were made of the same material and color. The sort who tripped along the beach beneath a lace parasol, rather than peeked out from behind a trembling broadsheet littered with other people’s broken hearts.
Brokenhearted was a position Allegra was never, ever going to find herself in. She remembered all too vividly what it had been like to lose her parents. She would not willingly place herself in a situation where she could lose someone else that she loved.
In fact, it was better for all parties if Not-Captain L’Amour swaggered right on by, without so much as noticing Allegra hiding behind a broadsheet whilst seated on a flaking dry log.
A shadow fell across her seconds before his finger touched the crease of her broadsheet.
Chapter 8
The top of Not-Captain L’Amour’s handsome head peered over the top of Allegra’s broadsheet. A tumble of black curls over laughing gray eyes. It was unfair that the wrinkles beside men’s eyes could be this attractive. Rude to be so casually dashing at this hour of the morning.
And yet it was not her newspaper that she wished for him to touch, but her skin. To take her hand in his as he had done the night before, this time without cumbersome gloves in the way. To press his lips to the backs of her knuckles, so that she could extrapolate from there, and spend the rest of eternity imagining what that kiss might feel like elsewhere on her body.
She let go of the broadsheet. “You can read it if you want. Return it to Mrs. Cartwright when you’re finished.”
He rolled the paper without glancing at its contents, tucked it inside his lapel, then sat down next to Allegra as though it were completely unobjectionable for a rakish gentleman to perch on a piece of flotsam next to a drab spinster.
Not even “shabby-genteel.”
Just shabby.
“Did you enjoy the assembly last night?” he asked.
She enjoyed the moments with him in the ballroom. “Yes, very much, thank you. Are you… Do you still…”
“I asked the proprietress to please say she ‘cannot supply that information’ if anyone were to enquire about a certain Captain Hamish L’Amour.”
“You did? What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Who is Captain Hamish L’Amour?’”
“What did you say?”
He stretched out his legs before him. “I winked and said… ‘Exactly.’”
His smile was just as roguish as Allegra imagined the real Captain L’Amour’s would be, if there were any such thing as a real Captain L’Amour.
“What is your name?” she blurted out. He had said he had come to Brighton in search of anonymity, but she could not keep calling him Not-Captain L’Amour.
He considered her. “Won’t it be confusing if I tell you? You’re not worried about accidentally using the wrong moniker at an inopportune moment?”
She shook her head. “I’ll say it’s a private pet name.”
“Ah. In that case, your secret, sordid pet name for me is…” He leaned closer and lowered his voice, so that the rumble of his words tickled just behind her ear. “John.”
She could not help but grin at the un-Hamish L’Amour-ness of his true name, and waited for the rest of it.
It was not forthcoming.
Anonymity, she recalled. Perhaps his Christian name wasn’t even John. A lie wasn’t any less than she deserved, but at least “John” was better than calling him Not-Captain L’Amour.
“Well…John,” she said. “I am Allegra, and I am pleased to meet you. Again.”
He lifted her hand in his. Skin-to-skin, as she’d fantasized.
His hand was warmer than she’d imagined. Stronger. A bit rough. Not quite working-man’s hands, but also not the buttery cream smooth hands of an idle gentleman. A contradiction. A mystery.
He lifted her fingers up past an exquisitely tailored frock coat only the wealthy could afford to purchase or wear—the ton’s prevailing style was to wear clothing in which it would prove impossible to perform any actual work—passing yet another glittery waistcoat, then a puff of cravat with razor sharp folds, the sort a gentleman’s valet might toil for hours over, and up to his lips.
And then…and then…he pressed those wide, firm lips ever so softly to the back of her hand, which was trembling and unfashionably tanned and definitely not the silken skin of a highborn lady.
He did not drop her fingers in repugnance, but rather let his lips linger on the back of her hand a heartbeat too long, his heavy-lidded gray eyes never leaving her face.
“I am extraordinarily pleased to meet you.”
With each word, his breath feathered over her knuckles and into her bones, burrowing into the corners of her brain, where each syllable was likely to rumble back out and into her dreams whenever she was trying to sleep.
He lowered her hand.
She did not know whether the wiser move was to snatch her fingers away from him, or to toss herself into his lap for a thorough ravishing right here on the beach. At least another touch of his lips. Preferably on hers. Or anywhere he pleased. Everywhere they both pleased.
She pulled her shaking hand into her lap and pretended not to be affected by his perfectly normal gesture. If Allegra were an actual lady, the back of her hand would be kissed a thousand times per day. It was not his fault she had absolutely no practice resisting such romantic flummery. It was laughable, not…lightning striking.
“What are you out here ruminating about?” he asked.
“I wasn’t ruminating,” she said. “I was reading the newspaper.”
“You weren’t doing anything of the sort.”
“Very well, I was wishing I’d brought along a pianoforte.”