A Difficult Disguise (10 page)

He seemed to hesitate, his foot shifting slightly, first this way, then that way, as if measuring the softness of the flesh beneath him, while Billy held her breath, tears stinging her eyes, before Fletcher finally gave a mighty heave that sent Billy and the second boot to the floor.

It was over. She had done it. She looked up at Fletcher, searching his eyes for any hint that he had known that the buttocks he had recently known so intimately were not that of a young boy, but the man looked to be faintly confused rather than suspicious, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

She shook her head, wordlessly berating herself for her fears. Fletcher Belden’s sensibilities weren’t so subtle, so discerning. He wouldn’t have been intrigued by a soft bottom. It took the bosom of someone like Beatrice, a bosom so prominent she could have just as easily balanced the mugs of ale on it, leaving her hands free for other work, to pique the man’s interest.

Billy stayed on the floor to tug off her own boots, then walked around to the opposite side of the bed, intent on getting herself between the covers, her back turned to Fletcher, before that man decided to strip to the buff, which she prayed to the good Lord he was not in the custom of doing.

“You intend to sleep in your breeches?” Fletcher asked just as Billy raised the covers and made to slide beneath them.

“You didn’t give me time enough to pack another set of clothes,” she answered gruffly, wondering to herself if Fletcher had now set himself in the role of her guardian or, even worse, her mother. “I’ll change my linen in the morning, if that’s all right with you.”

There was a short, pregnant silence, during which Billy prayed to any kind saint who might still be awake and prone to listen to her, that Fletcher would accept her explanation and be done with it.

“Suit yourself,” Fletcher said at last, already in the process of ridding himself of every stitch of clothing he wore before he, too, slid between the covers. “I never did know a boy your age who did not have a great affection for filth. Just stay on your own side of the bed, if you please.”

Billy knew Fletcher was naked without having to look at him, a thing she would rather have died than do. She knew he was naked because an hour later, as she was still desperately trying to find sleep, Fletcher turned toward her, one long arm snaking out to wrap itself around her waist.

She tried to move him away, for his body was curved against her spine, her fingers tingling as she encountered his bare forearm. Turning fully onto her back, she looked across the pillow straight into Fletcher’s sleeping face. The bright light of the full moon streaming through the windowpanes detailed every feature that lay so close to her, and her skin was cooled by the sweet breeze of his slow, even breathing.

He was so incredibly, heart-stoppingly handsome, a fact that had occurred to her before, but without causing the reaction it was causing now. The covers, which had somehow slipped to his waist, moved slowly up and down with his every breath, and she swallowed hard, averting her eyes from what she knew to be forbidden territory, only to be captured by the sight of his finely muscled chest.

His hair was blond there as well, as blond as the hair on his head, and shone almost silver in the moonlight. She had seen men stripped to their waists before—a person couldn’t live in the district and not see workmen in the fields, their shirts discarded as they worked with the sheep—but she had never been this close to one of them.

It was not just his chest that was bare—and she knew it. Oh, dear Lord, did she know it! She pushed at his arm again, but he only moaned softly, pressed the length of his body more intimately against hers, and tightened his grip.

How did she get to be in this terrible position? What madness had allowed her to continue her deception, so nobly begun, to such a degree? She firmed her jaw, remembering the events that had led up to her escape from Patterdale, trying to convince herself that she had been right to do what she had done, what she was still trying to do.

She had to know if Fletcher Belden was a good man, a man who would save her from the life her circumstances had thrust upon her, a life that could end at any moment as she became a sacrifice to the dark demons or whatever nonsense it was that her relatives were about.

But had she been correct? Had she really seen what she thought she had seen? Of course she had! How could she doubt it? Yes, she had a vivid imagination. Yes, that imagination had more than once landed her in the briars. She would have to be even more of a zany than her relatives thought her to be to deny it, even to herself. But that didn’t mean she had been wrong this time.

Besides, she didn’t have to stay in Patterdale, waiting for her relatives to do her in. She wasn’t even supposed to be in Patterdale. Fletcher Belden was supposed to have come and taken her away.

But he hadn’t come. She had waited and waited—for a whole long month—and he hadn’t come. He hadn’t written. He hadn’t even sent someone else to act in his stead.

So, being a female of independent mind, she had come to Lakeview seeking him, only to find that he was kicking up his heels in London, totally insensitive to her plight.

It had been one thing to run from Patterdale, but it was another thing entirely to place herself in the hands of someone who so obviously did not want to deal with her.

Yet, knowing she couldn’t possibly return to Patterdale without reaping the whirlwind of wrath her escape had doubtless stirred up, she had decided to remain at Lakeview incognito, to see and judge Fletcher Belden for herself, and then make up her own mind as to which was the lesser of two evils: Patterdale or Lakeview.

Yes, she had planned to see Fletcher Belden. She hadn’t, however—she thought with a nervous giggle, wondering if she was well on her way to becoming hopelessly depraved—planned on seeing quite this much of him.

Fletcher moved again, his beautifully molded hand now traveling in a slow upward motion, toward her smock-covered breast. Billy froze, unable to move, as his fingers trailed lightly across the crest of one soft mound. He moaned softly, his hand gently cupping her breast, as a slight, satisfied smile curved the corners of his mouth. His lower body pressed even more provocatively against her hipbone.

This couldn’t be happening! Billy couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t react.

But it was happening. And she was reacting. She was melting, she was burning. She was dying of embarrassment, she was dying of curiosity. Sensations she could not explain coursed white-hot through her body, bringing a flush to her cheeks and a faint buzzing to her ears.

Summoning up every bit of moral and physical strength remaining to her—and at the moment, there wasn’t a lot there to draw on—Billy pushed his encroaching, intoxicating hand from her body and slid onto the carpet, leaving Fletcher to turn fully onto his stomach, a low, frustrated moan making her ache to pelt him repeatedly over the head with the pillow that had followed her off the bed.

Her body shaking with reaction, her heart pounding as she realized for the first time the full extent of what had nearly happened, Billy clutched the pillow to her and crossed to the window seat, where she spent the rest of the night curled into a small, miserable ball of pain and, perhaps, just a smidgen of regret.

Fletcher spent the better part of the following morning sneaking covert glances at his runaway-cum-groom as they rode toward Coniston. Something was wrong; some change had taken place between last night and today, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

He had slept well, or at least he thought he had, yet he had awakened curiously unrefreshed and somehow dissatisfied, as if he had gone to sleep thirsting for a woman and there had been no woman in his bed to quench that thirst.

He was a man of moderate needs, taking women as he found them, for pleasure, and without actively pursuing them with the ardor of someone like, say, a James Whittington. He had kept a mistress before his time in the Peninsula, and even his unrequited, unconsummated love for Christine Denham had not turned him away from the satisfactions to be found in a lovely woman’s bed once Christine had been lost to him.

He’d had at least three women—three young, beautiful, willing women—since breaking off his courtship with Christine, so surely he had not been without a female for so long that he had been forced to dream about one. And, most certainly, he couldn’t have wanted Beatrice enough to have dreamed about her embarrassingly overdeveloped charms.

So, why had he woken this morning so unsatisfied, feeling so cheated, with the memory of a desirable warm body melting against his floating so near the surface of his tormented mind?

Billy, now riding in front of him along a narrow winding path, had already been awake and fully dressed—his linen, Fletcher had hoped absently, already changed—when Fletcher had opened his eyes. It was strange, Fletcher remembered now. Billy had been looking at him oddly and had quickly turned his back when Fletcher made to throw back the covers and rise, the boy showing yet again his almost unseemly modesty.

Modesty? With another man? Was that what it had been? Or had it been more than that?

The silence of the open countryside, broken only by lowing cows and bleating sheep, was fractured as Fletcher suddenly exclaimed, “God’s eyebrows! I couldn’t have!”

Billy reined in her mount and turned to ask if something were wrong, but Fletcher didn’t answer except to say that he had been thinking out loud.

He was too caught up in his waking nightmare—a nightmare that had a lot to do with the faint memory of holding Billy close against him during the night—to say more. From that nightmare it was only a short, uncomfortably breached gap to the memory of Billy’s soft, slightly flared buttocks against his stockinged foot as the groom had helped him with his boots.

Billy was a most handsome young lad, fine-boned nearly to femininity, graceful, intelligent, and obviously born of good stock. He was appealing, too, in an infuriating way, what with his outrageously disrespectful behavior and almost imperial manner. Yes, Billy was very likable.

But, no. No! It was impossible. It was more than impossible—it was unthinkable. He couldn’t be... He couldn’t be lusting after a young boy.

Could he?

They climbed to the top of the Old Man of Coniston, leaving their horses behind at the Low Water Tarn, arriving at the summit just after midday.

The view from the Old Man was dazzling, and Billy was properly impressed, listening as Fletcher pointed out Skiddaw and the rugged fells to the north, peering carefully to the east as Fletcher directed her to look past Coniston Water to the Yorkshire hills in the background, exclaiming in glee as she could make out the sea and the Isle of Man to the west, and nodding in acknowledgment as she followed the direction of Fletcher’s pointed finger to see through a gathering mist to the summit of Snowdon to the south.

It was the mist and their growing hunger that at last prompted them to abandon their scenic vantage point at the top of the fell and return to the horses, Fletcher once more subdued and Billy once more eyeing him warily, wondering just how much the man really remembered of the events of the past evening.

Retracing their steps until they reached a wider path, Fletcher led the way with Pagan, neither employer nor groom speaking, passing through Tilberthwaite, Fell Foot, and Yewdale, to finally cross the beck and turn to the left to what Fletcher said was Tilberthwaite Gill, a small, secluded gorge that had a force, or waterfall, at its upper end. It was beside the waterfall that Fletcher dismounted, announcing they would camp here for the night.

To Billy’s tortured mind, Fletcher couldn’t have made a worse choice. The small gorge was beautiful, even romantic—if one was of a mind to be romantic, which Billy most certainly was not. The waterfall, a lovely thing that danced and sang and gaily reflected the sunlight, drew her to its edge, to stand entranced as the slight spray dampened her cheeks and hair. Wildflowers and exotic grasses were everywhere, and birdsong filled the trees.

If Fletcher picked any of those wildflowers and formed them into a daisy chain, she would dunk him head and ears in the beck, for the last thing she needed was to see Fletcher Belden again at his heart-melting best. Would this terrible trip ever be over?