Page 28 of Impetuous

He reached out to brush his knuckles across her cheek, and his touch scattered all her thoughts. Cassandra quickly moved away.

“Of course, the fact that there was blame on both sides does not mean that we should allow it to happen again.” She hoped he did not hear the panic in her voice. She was not sure how she would respond if Philip were to kiss her again. Just the thought of it made her insides jump around as if she had swallowed live coals. “I—uh, we are going to be working together, and we should, I think, conduct ourselves in, uh, the manner of professional colleagues.”

“Professional colleagues?” Humor rose in his eyes. “What profession, may I ask? Treasure hunter? Aren’t those usually pirates?”

“You know what I mean. We should act the way we would act if, say, you were doing this with another man.”

He did not point out to her that with another man he would have dropped the whole thing at the beginning and left it that way. What had brought him back to Cassandra was Cassandra herself and not some long-lost dowry, but he was not about to tell her that.

“Otherwise,” Cassandra concluded, “our work would suffer. And we would be uncomfortable working together.”

“As I told you, I have no wish to make you uncomfortable.” It was for that reason that he stood and stepped back from her now, letting out a little sigh of regret.

“Excellent. Shall we agree to meet at Chesilworth this afternoon?”

“No, you must allow me to escort you,” he protested. “After all, there is no need for secrecy this afternoon.”

“It is doubtless safer if you do not appear at Moulton House this afternoon. I don’t know what scheme they might have cooked up to keep you there or to accompany us. Besides, I have no need of an escort; the children will be with me,” Cassandra reminded him with a smile. “I know of no men of evil intent who would not be thwarted by the sight of twin twelve-year-old boys and a young girl, too. Besides, there is never need for escort here. Dunsleigh is the most peaceful of places. Olivia often complains that nothing ever happens here.”

“With two rowdy young boys, I cannot imagine how that is possible.”

“Oh, but whatever one’s brothers do does not count as anything happening, you see.”

“Of course. How silly of me not to realize that. Miss Olivia, I take it, longs for grand adventures.”

“Yes. We are all, as you are aware, a family of dreamers.” She cast him a significant look.

Sir Philip winced. “Ah, I can see that that statement will come back to haunt me often enough.”

Cassandra chuckled. “I shall not mention it again. After all, you have joined us in dreaming now.”

“Without your wholehearted enthusiasm, I fear.”

“Don’t worry. It will come.”

Sir Philip watched the way her mouth curved up as she smiled, the inviting fullness of her lower lip and the appealing little dent in the middle that cut into its plump flesh. Oddly, her smile seemed to accentuate the narrow crease. He was aware of a strong desire to kiss the dent away. Though he had meant it when he told Cassandra that he would not want to offend her by making advances or try to take advantage of her, he was not sure how he was going to be around her for any length of time and continue to act like a gentleman.

He forced himself to step back and sketch a bow to her. “Then I will meet you this afternoon at Chesilworth. One o’clock?”

Cassandra nodded. She felt curiously reluctant to part from him. “Yes. One. We will be there.”

* * *

AS SOON AS Cassandra returned to the house, she was swept up in her aunt’s frenzy over the party she had decided to give the following evening. Even though Aunt Ardis had pretended to have already arranged it, in fact there had been no thought of a party until this morning. It would, perforce, be small—if nothing else, there were few people in this rural spot whom Aunt Ardis considered worthy enough to be invited to witness her triumph in having Sir Philip Neville as a guest. Still, there were invitations to be written and given to a footman to deliver, as well as a dinner to plan, not to mention a thorough cleaning of the formal rooms, flower arrangements and a number of other logistical chores to be taken care of. Such chores, of course, fell, in Aunt Ardis’s opinion, into the realm of her efficient niece.

Cassandra managed to get everything set in motion so that she was able to slip away right after luncheon, and she and her brothers and sister went to Chesilworth, where they found Sir Philip waiting for them. They spent the afternoon working as they had the day before, the time livened by Sir Philip’s occasional bursts of horseplay with the twins or his twinkling teasing of Olivia. They enjoyed themselves so much that they were late leaving Chesilworth and missed tea at Moulton Hall.

The next day Cassandra once again spent the morning working on her aunt’s dinner party, scheduled for that evening. Then she and her siblings hiked the familiar path through meadow and woods to the grounds of Chesilworth.

When they crested the rise behind the house, they saw the figures of two men, and as they drew nearer, it became clear that one was holding a shotgun on the other. With a gasp of dismay, Cassandra recognized the man holding the gun as their former groundskeeper at Chesilworth, Jack Chumley, and the man he threatened as Sir Philip.

“Chumley!” Cassandra lifted her skirts and ran down the hill, her brothers and sister running along with her.

They came to a panting halt beside their former employee, and it was a moment before they could speak. Hart, typically, recovered his breath first.

“What are you doing to Sir Philip?”

“You mean you know this chap?” Chumley asked, his bushy eyebrows lifting in surprise. “I caught him sneaking around the house just now.”