‘Good morning, ladies.’
‘Er...’ For the first time in her life, Thea had no words at all. Her cheeks were glowing scarlet and it took all her strength to stop her eyes wandering back to where they had just feasted, making her blink and gape like a hooked fish. Because it was the right and proper thing to do, she immediately averted her badly behaved eyes and stared off into space, mortified.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said Harriet’s voice over her shoulder, then she unsubtly nudged Thea with her elbow. ‘I take back everything I said about buckskin, Thea. It is vastly overrated.’ Shamelessly, her friend barged past—no doubt to get a closer look. Harriet would never avert her eyes. ‘And who might you be?’
‘Lord Graham Chadwick.’ In her peripheral vision, the naked man executed a courtly bow with one hand still clutching his unmentionables, apparently completely comfortable and unrepentant in his nudity. ‘But do call me Gray. I am new to the parish.’
‘Ah, yes! You have recently rented Kirton House, have you not? Why—we are practically neighbours, my lord.’ Typically, Harriet was not lost for words. Evidently, she felt the situation warranted small talk, no doubt to prolong the encounter for her own outrageous reasons. ‘I am Lady Crudgington of Exley House and this is Miss Theodora Cranford, your new landlord’s ward.’
‘His ward?’
Hearing herself mentioned by the naked man himself, Thea guiltily looked up, heartily ashamed that her eyes had scandalously manoeuvred to his impressive chest again when she had been trying so hard to keep them properly latched elsewhere. After a valiant battle with the wayward, impetuous inner Thea, her eyeballs reluctantly flicked to his. The cocky smile was gone, replaced with an expression she couldn’t quite fathom.
‘The very one, although Thea has long passed the milestone of her majority, so is technically just his niece now.’ Harriet shot her a loaded glance. ‘Content to wither in her uncle’s house until Cupid sends her a worthy knight in shining armour to finally whisk her away.’
Before her interfering friend began matchmaking in earnest, something she was prone to do at every available opportunity, Thea had to interrupt despite having no earthly clue what she should say. ‘Mr Gray... I mean, Lord Graham... Er...’
Could this be any more mortifying?
‘We heard a dog... I came to rescue it... I didn’t mean to interrupt your... Um...’ Gracious, now she was waffling like a ninny and her silly eyes were darting every which way possible. It probably looked as though she suffered from an uncontrollable facial tick. One which explained why no knight had thus far bothered saving her. Her face was so warm and doubtless so very red with guilt that one could toast crumpets on it if there happened to be some handy.
To save herself from further embarrassment and to give her naughty eyes something suitable to do, Thea rapidly turned her back and stared resolutely at the trees. ‘Put some clothes on, sir! You are a disgrace. What do you think you are about, cavorting naked in my uncle’s stream?’
Hopefully that let him know in no uncertain terms that she did not consider him shining-knight material and was horrified by his total lack of propriety rather than itching to stare unabashedly at his wet body. His shirt and breeches lay in a heap near her feet, so she snatched them up and without turning around wafted them in the general direction of her friend. ‘Give him these! Immediately!’
She could hear him wading towards the bank and, if she turned her eyes slightly to the right, could see Harriet holding his shamelessly discarded garments in such a way that Lord Whatever-His-Name-Was would have to rise out of the water to reach them. She shot her friend a pointed look which was, of course, completely ignored.
‘Tell me, my lord, how exactly did you come to be naked in Gislingham’s brook? Are there no bath tubs in Kirton House?’
‘I apologise wholeheartedly for shocking you, ladies.’ She saw his big hand grab the proffered clothes, then heard the water move as he sunk back into it. ‘But I blame my dog. He led me astray. Trefor is a very bad influence. It is entirely his fault you caught me cavorting.’
At that, something fast and as black as pitch emerged out of the foliage with an enormous stick in its mouth. He took one look at Thea and simultaneously dropped the stick and shook himself, sending a spray of muddy water all over her favourite green-sprigged muslin, before wagging his tail cheerfully.
Then he lunged.
Two big, wet paws hit her squarely on her belly and she lost her balance. Arms waving like a windmill in a gale, she struggled to stay upright. Instinctively she threw one foot behind to steady herself, only to realise too late that she stood on an incline. Thea tumbled clumsily backwards, her feet lifting from the bank as gravity took over. To her utter horror, she landed with a huge splash in the water mere inches from the irritating naked man’s groin.
Judging from her furious expression after she emerged coughing and spluttering from the water, Gray shouldn’t have laughed. Especially as she was, unbelievably, Gislingham’s ward and he needed to make a good impression. But with Trefor already swimming in excited circles around her, her vibrant hair plastered over her face and her blush so ferocious she practically glowed, he couldn’t help it. It had been a spectacular fall.
‘Here... Let me help you up.’
She slapped away his proffered free hand. ‘No, thank you! I know where that has been!’ Outraged and delightfully flustered, she dragged herself to her feet, shooting daggers at her companion who was also snorting with barely contained laughter, as she tried and failed to climb up the slippery bank. ‘Don’t just stand there, Harriet! Do something!’
Keeping his filthy hands to himself and wondering exactly how he was supposed to fix this mess before Lord Fennimore had him lynched for his carelessness, Gray watched the older woman brace her legs and heave the fuming redhead out of the water. Despite his now-subdued mood, it was a wholly pleasant sight. Miss Cranford’s soaked, thin summer dress was stuck to her shapely body like a second skin, moulding wonderfully to reveal a gorgeous peach of a bottom, and because she had to hoist her dripping skirts up to scramble up the incline, he saw a great deal of a very fine pair of legs from ankle to mid-thigh. He had always had a thing for bottoms and legs. Hers weren’t covered in stockings, giving him a splendid view of her pale alabaster skin, which nicely filled in some of the blanks in his suddenly rampant imagination.
She would be wonderfully pale from top to bottom, and, like a Titian, that paleness would perfectly set off all her riotous hair. Although darker now that it was soaked, Gray remembered how it had popped and crackled in the sunlight when he first saw her, like the dying embers of a warm winter fire. Evidently, he now had a penchant for redheads as well as bottoms and legs. Who knew? It was these surprising, unforeseen revelations which made his meandering life interesting. That and the enormous potholes it consistently threw in his path.
He did a quick flick through his many happy memories, disappointingly sparse these last two years since ambition had come unexpectedly knocking, and came to the unfortunate conclusion he had never bedded a redhead before. Something he needed to remedy—but not yet. It was a crying shame he couldn’t bed this one, because she was a tasty morsel if ever there was one, but Gislingham’s ward wasn’t his mission.
Gislingham was.
For the foreseeable future, Gray had to be on his very best behaviour. But he would store it in his mind for future reference and try to repair whatever damage he had done, making a mental note to seek out a suitably willing redhead as soon as he was able as a reward if he miraculously managed to save things.
While the ladies were occupied on the opposite bank, he swiftly pulled on his shirt then sank down in