And now he need not merely contemplate kissing her, he knew how she tasted and how it was to trace the curve of her upper lip with his tongue. The taste and feel of her had been oddly familiar.
He knew how she felt, her slight curves pressed to his chest, her weight on his body, and oddly it was as though he had always known that. It was remarkably effective in taking his mind off the bone-deep ache in his thigh and the sharp pain in his right hand. Alistair urged the bay alongside her horse as Dita used both hands to tuck up the strands of hair that had escaped from the net. The collar of her habit was open where the neckcloth was missing and his eyes followed the vee of pale skin into the shadows.
Last night her evening gown had revealed much more, but somehow it had not seemed so provocative. When he lifted his eyes she was gathering up the reins and he could tell from the way her lips tightened that she knew where he had been looking. If he had stayed in England, and watched the transformation from gawky child into provocatively attractive woman, would the impact when he looked at her be as great—or would she just be little Dita, grown up? Because there was no mistaking what he wanted when he looked at her now.
‘We are both to be passengers on the Bengal Queen,’ he said. It was a statement of the obvious, but he needed to keep her here for a few more moments, to see if he could provoke her into any more sharp-tongued remarks. He remembered last night how he had teased her with talk of chastisement and how unexpectedly stimulating that had been. The thought of wrestling between the sheets with a sharp-tongued, infuriated Lady Perdita who was trying to slap him was highly erotic. He might even let her get a few blows in before he …
‘Yes,’ she agreed, sounding wary. Doubtless some shadow of his thoughts was visible on his face. Alistair shifted in the saddle and got his unruly, and physically uncomfortable, imaginings under control. Better for now to remember the gawky tomboy-child who had always been somewhere in the background, solemn green eyes following his every move. ‘You will be anxious to get home, no doubt,’ she said with careful formality. ‘I was sorry to hear that Lord Iwerne is unwell.’
‘Thank you.’ He could think of nothing else to say that was neither a lie nor hypocritical. From the months’-old news he had received from Lyndonholt Castle there was a strong chance that he was already the marquis, and try as he might to summon up appropriate feelings of anxiety and sadness for his father, he could not. They had never been close and the circumstances of their parting had been bitter. And even if his father still lived, what would he make of the hardened, travelled, twenty-nine-year-old who returned in the place of the angry, naïve young man who had walked away from him?
And there was his stepmother, of course. What would Imogen be expecting of the stepson who had not even stayed to see her wed?
She was in for a shock if she thought he would indulge her or had any tender feelings left for her. She could take herself off to the Dower House with her widow’s portion and leave the Castle for the bride he fully intended to install there as soon as possible. And that bride would be a gentle, obedient, chaste young lady of good breeding. He would select her with care and she would provide him with heirs and be an excellent hostess. And she would leave his heart safely untouched—love was for idealists and romantics and he was neither. Not any more.
‘A rupee for your thoughts?’ Dita said, her wary expression replaced with amusement at his abstraction. It almost had him smiling back, seeing a shadow of the patient child in an unusual young lady who did not take offence at a man forgetting she was there. But then, she was probably relieved his attention was elsewhere. ‘Are you daydreaming of home?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But the thought was hardly worth a rupee. Ma’am, it was a pleasure.’ He bowed his hatless head for a moment, turned his horse towards Government House and cantered off.
For a moment there he had been tempted to stay, to offer to escort her back to wherever she was living. He must have hit his head in that fall, Alistair thought, to contemplate such a thing. He was going to be close to Dita Brooke for three months in the narrow confines of the ship, and he had no intention of resuming the role of elder brother, or however she had seen him as a child. He was not going to spend his time getting her out of scrapes and frightening off importunate young men; it made him feel old just thinking about it. As for that impulsive kiss, she had dealt with it briskly enough, even if she had responded to it. She was sophisticated enough to take it at face value as part of the repertoire of a rake, so nothing to worry about there.
Alistair trotted into the stable yard of Government House and dismounted with some care. The Governor General was away, but he was interested in plant hunting, too, and had extended a vague invitation that Alistair had found useful to take up for the few weeks before the ship sailed.
Damn this leg. He supposed he had better go and show it to the Governor’s resident doctor and be lectured on his foolishness in riding so hard with it not properly healed. But the prospect of weeks without energetic exercise had driven him out to ride each day for as long as the cool of the morning lasted. No doubt Dita had been motivated by the same considerations.
Which led him to think of her again, and of violent exercise, and the combination of the two was uncomfortably vivid. No, his feelings were most definitely not brotherly, any more than those damnably persistent dreams about her were. ‘Bloody fool,’ he snapped at himself, startling the jemahdar at the front door.
Intelligent, headstrong, argumentative young women with a scandal in their past and a temper were not what he was looking for. A meek and biddable English rose who would give him no trouble and cause no scandal was what he wanted and Dita Brooke had never been a rosebud, let alone a rose. She was pure briar with thorns all the way.
As Alistair limped up the staircase to the first floor he thought of Dita’s threat to apply a tourniquet around his neck and laughed out loud at the memory of her face as she said it. The two men coming out of an office stopped at the sound.
‘Hell’s teeth, Lyndon, what’s happened to you?’ It was one of the Chatterton twins, probably Daniel, who had been flirting with Perdita last night. ‘Found that tiger again?’
‘My horse fell on the maidan and I’ve opened up the wound in my thigh. I’d better get a stitch in it—have you seen Dr Evans?’ Stoicism was one thing, being careless with open wounds in this climate quite another.
‘No, no sign of him—but we only dropped in to leave some papers, we haven’t seen anyone. Let’s get you up to your room while they find Evans. Daktar ko bulaiye,’ one twin called down to the jemahdar.
That was Callum, Alistair thought, waving away the offer of an arm in support. The responsible brother, by all accounts. ‘I can manage, but come and have a chota peg while they find him. It’s early, but I could do with it.’
They followed him up to his suite and settled themselves while his sirdar went for brandy. ‘Horse put its foot in a hole?’ Daniel asked.
‘Nothing so ordinary. I damn nearly collided with Lady Perdita, who was riding as if she’d a fox in her sights. I reined in hard to stop a crash and the horse over balanced. She wasn’t hurt,’ he added as Callum opened his mouth. ‘Interesting coincidence, meeting her here. My family are neighbours to hers, but it is years since I have seen her.’
‘Did you quarrel in those days?’ Daniel asked, earning himself a sharp kick on the ankle from his brother.
‘Ah, you noticed a certain friction?