“Damn!” Seeing his direction, even at that distance feeling the weight of his gaze, she realized her time to escape him had passed.
Assuming she had wanted to escape him.
Deverell reached the shade; ducking under a low-hanging branch, he halted before Audrey. She’d been watching the contest through a pair of lorgnettes, which now lay in her lap.
She looked up at him and blandly observed, “I had no idea Charlie was such an excellent shot—even better than you.”
He shrugged. “He was the better man on the day.”
Audrey raised her brows but said no more.
He turned to Phoebe—just as Stripes arrived on the lawn, heralding afternoon tea. Suppressing a grimace, he looked at Edith and Audrey. “Tea?”
“Yes, please.” They both nodded.
He turned to Phoebe and raised a brow.
She held out a hand. “I’ll come and help.”
Grasping her hand, he drew her to her feet. Side by side, they crossed to the trestle, where tea and cakes were being dispensed; he quizzed her on her lack of interest in archery, extending his interrogation to her childhood, anything to fill the time while he swiftly herded her past the urn and the cake plates and had them both on their way back to Audrey and Edith, avoiding all the other young ladies casting inviting glances his way.
They reached their aunts and handed around the cups. The two were engrossed in remembering some long-ago event and barely paused to nod their thanks; he and Phoebe stood beside their chairs and sipped.
Over the rim of her cup, Phoebe’s eyes met his.
He held her gaze for an instant, then drained half his cup in one swallow.
His back to the others, he looked toward the surrounding trees. Nothing more than distantly aware of other ladies’ glances, he was highly sensitive to Phoe
be’s. Ever since they’d left the folly, she’d been casting surreptitious looks his way; for the past hour, she’d all but constantly been watching him.
She and her glances were starting to distract him in a way in which he hadn’t been distracted for years—no, decades. Not since he’d been at Eton and the maids had cast covetous eyes over him. To his surprise, his reaction now wasn’t all that different from his reaction then, a lowering thought considering all the experience he’d accumulated in between.
It was clear that Phoebe was seriously considering his suggestion. That fact, combined with the effect of her glances, was steadily inflating his desire for her, a lust that, after that moment in the folly, he was all too well aware he couldn’t yet slake. Indeed, that it might be some time before he could slake it.
He’d been going to kiss her but hadn’t. While prudence and wisdom had dictated he pull back, his own needs were anything but appeased. And after the last hour of those considering looks, which strongly suggested she was at the very least of two minds over continuing to resist him, all he wanted was to get her alone and reassess their situation.
As Audrey had guessed, he’d deliberately lost the archery contest so he could pursue Phoebe without distraction.
And hopefully convince her to surrender the kiss he hadn’t taken earlier. If he didn’t kiss her soon, didn’t at least taste her, he was going to go insane.
He drained his cup. Deciding the level in hers had dropped sufficiently, he caught her eye. “There’ll be nothing but talk for the next hour or so.” He kept his voice low, beneath the level of Audrey’s and Edith’s conversation. “I wonder if you’d care for a walk. There’s a pretty spot along the stream.”
He’d discovered it that morning and had taken due note.
She held his gaze for an instant, then nodded. She moved to set down her cup on the small table beside Audrey. Audrey paused and glanced at her.
“We’re going for a walk by the stream.” Phoebe met Edith’s eyes as her aunt looked up; she waited, the defense that she was twenty-five hovering on the tip of her tongue. But both Edith and Audrey merely smiled.
“Yes, of course, dear.” Edith waved her away. “It’s such a glorious afternoon.”
“A pity not to enjoy it to the full,” Audrey added. Then they resumed their discussion.
Phoebe narrowed her eyes at the pair. Admittedly they would have had to swivel to glance at Deverell, as he was standing behind their chairs, but they should at least have looked at him in the way chaperones always did—warning him to behave himself.
She was twenty-five and they weren’t going far, but still.
Inwardly shaking her head, she turned to Deverell and promptly forgot about her godmother and her aunt. There was something in his face—a hardness edging the lines of cheek and jaw—that seemed somehow different.