Unbuttoning The Innocent Miss

‘What did you say?’ Lashley’s head jerked away from the window, startled at the words. At last something had caught his interest and it hadn’t been French. Of course. That was how her luck had been lately.

‘I said, “If the mountain won’t come to you, you must go to the mountain”. It’s from The Essays of...’

‘Francis Bacon, I know. But Bacon wrote his essays in English,’ Lashley finished. ‘Turkish would be my guess.’

‘Yes, you’re correct. Most people don’t recognise Turkish.’ That he did was pleasantly surprising but it didn’t make up for the fact that he couldn’t focus on his lesson. He was a grown man, used to long meetings about estates and ledgers, there was nothing drier. Why couldn’t he focus on French which was anything but dull?

‘And yet you speak it, Miss Welton? Is it one of your four languages?’ He was watching her now, his sharp blue eyes on her face. He’d remembered May’s carefully placed titbit from dinner. She flushed, pleased that he’d recalled something about her.

‘It will hopefully be my fifth. Since the Ottoman Empire appears destined to demand British attention, it seemed prudent to pick up the skill.’ Maybe this was the opening she needed. She leaned forward, pointing to the page and hopefully displaying a pleasing expanse of bosom. ‘We’re not here to learn Turkish, Mr Lashley. Perhaps we might try the French sentences again? Read the first one, si’l vous plait.’

Lashley drew a breath. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly ‘Ow est lee salon?’

There it was, the second reason this lesson was a disaster, in terrible ear-splitting reality; Lashley was horrible. As if his attention deficit wasn’t problem enough, Lashley’s French sounded awful when he did try. Suffice it to say, she’d taught younger children French with more success than she was having here. Abysmal didn’t even begin to cover it. Praise was a good way to encourage success, but what could she say about this? ‘All right, it sounded like a question, that’s good. It was meant to be one.’

Lashley saw right through the comment. ‘I’m not a child, Miss Welton. Lying to me won’t help. You make it sound so easy. I look at the words and I see what they mean, but I can’t say them, not like you.’

‘Not yet anyway,’ Claire insisted. She couldn’t stand the look of resignation that crept across his face. ‘We simply have to practise.’

Lashley moved away from the window and ran a hand through his hair. He shook his head. ‘I have been practising. For years. I’m sorry, Miss Welton, to have wasted your time. This simply isn’t going to work.’

He was leaving? No. Unacceptable. She was not losing him after one lesson. If Beatrice was willing to brazen out having a baby with no father, perfect Jonathon Lashley could learn to speak French and she could teach him. But she had to act fast. He was already halfway to the door. Something fiery and stubborn flared inside Claire. He was not leaving this room. Claire strode across the room—no, wait, who was she kidding? She was nearly running to beat him to the door. The rules could go hang.

She fixed herself in the doorway, hands on hips to take up the entire space, blocking the exit. He would not elude her. ‘I never figured you for a quitter, Mr Lashley, or perhaps you have simply never met with a challenge you could not immediately overcome?’

‘Do you know me so well as to make such a pronouncement?’ Lashley folded his arms across his chest, his eyes boring into her. This was a colder, harsher Jonathon Lashley than the one she knew. The laughing golden boy of the ton had been transformed into something dangerously exciting. Her pulse raced, but she stood her ground.

What ground it was! She’d never been this close to him before; so close she had to look up to see his face, so close her breasts might actually brush the lapels of his coat without any contrivance on her part, so close she could smell his morning soap, all cedar and sandalwood and entirely masculine, entirely him. She’d waited her whole life to stand this close to Jonathon Lashley and, of course, it was her luck that when it happened it was because of a quarrel—a quarrel she’d provoked.

She’d never thought she’d fight with him, the supposed ‘man of her dreams’. She’d been thinking ‘never’ a lot since this all started. Yesterday, she’d never thought they would have desperation in common. Today, she’d never dreamed his French would be this bad, or that she’d have trouble teaching him or that she’d quarrel with him.

‘You are a very bold woman, Miss Welton.’ His tone was one of cold caution. ‘Yesterday you mopped up my trousers and today you are preventing me from leaving a room. One can only wonder what you might do to my person next. Perhaps tomorrow I will find myself tied to a chair and at your mercies.’

Claire flushed violently. The rather descriptive words conjured hot images of just how that might look and the mercies she might indeed invoke flooded her mind in vivid colour. Jonathon bound, his perfect cravat undone, his shirt open, those long legs wrapped about the chair, his thighs spread wide, his tight breeches unable to disguise what lay between them. Sweet heavens, where was her fan when she needed it? Where was her self-restraint? Those were thoughts for the dark of night when she was alone in her bed. But it was bright day and he was standing right in front of her, present for every one of them.

That was outside of enough. She had to stop. Claire put a tight lid on the images and stuffed them back inside whatever Pandora’s box they’d sprung from. This was all his fault, every scrap and speck of it from the disastrous lesson to the heated imaginings of rope tricks involving knots and a gentleman who wasn’t necessarily wearing clothes.

‘You asked for it!’ Claire’s temper snapped. Where had that come from? She hadn’t been this bold in years. She’d thought she’d forgotten how. Apparently not. She could lay her boldness, too, at the altar of his provocation. He was going to damn well be accountable for all of it. Great. He had her swearing now as if erotic fantasies of tying him to a chair in the middle of her father’s dusty library wasn’t enough. ‘You wanted my help and you shall have it. You need me if you have any chance of claiming that post in Vienna!’

She ruthlessly gripped his arm and turned him around, dragging him back to the window, the furthest point from the door. If he was going to run, she’d have plenty of warning, and if he couldn’t sit still, then she wouldn’t belabour it. Chairs might not be the best idea just now anyway and she had to pick her battles. ‘Now, we’re going to go through the sentences again. This time, all you have to do is watch my mouth. Do you think you can manage that?’

* * *

Probably not. He hadn’t managed to do anything right since the lesson started. He’d made an apparently lurid comment about chairs and provoked a lady to an unladylike show of temper and it was all her fault. Watching her mouth was what had caused the problem in the first place. What the hell was wrong with her? This was not the Miss Welton he knew, assuming he knew her at all?

It occurred to him that perhaps he didn’t know her any more than he’d accused her of knowing him. What did they know of each other beyond face recognition? Before today, their adult life together consisted of encountering each other at various entertainments where politeness required he acknowledge her.

She’d been out for three Seasons. What had she been doing all that time besides learning Turkish and blending into the wallpaper? Perhaps she had been tying men to chairs and having her mad way with them. She’d certainly blushed furiously enough when he’d made the remark. He’d give a guinea to know exactly what nature of thought had passed through her mind. It was always the quiet ones. And yet, he couldn’t rid himself of the notion that quietness didn’t come naturally to Claire Welton. It was, perhaps, an acquired skill. Interesting to think someone would want to become quiet.

‘Are you watching me?’ she insisted. ‘You have to concentrate.’ She started her French sentence all over again, having divined correctly that he’d missed it entirely.

He was concentrating. On her mouth. Just like she’d asked. Did she have any idea how difficult it was to stare at that wide pink mouth with its rather lush lower lip and those straight white teeth as they formed around impossible French syllables and keep his mind on the lesson? The task was nearly Herculean and it shouldn’t have been.

Perhaps the question wasn’t what the hell was wrong with her, but what the hell was wrong with him? Not once in three years of polite encounters had he ever felt quite so encouraged to look at her as he did today. Today he noticed everything, not just her mouth: those sherry-amber eyes, the nut brown of her hair, the rather distracting show of firm breasts lifted temptingly high in that bodice. Pale green was an excellent colour on her and whoever the modiste was who did the bodices of her gowns—suffice it to say that was a job well done.

‘Répétez. Je m’appelle Claire.’ He watched her mouth form the words and he repeated the phrase, his eyes taking the opportunity to stay riveted on her lips instead of other less seemly places.

‘Juh mapel Claire.’

‘Jonathon,’ she prompted softly. The sunlight through the window picked out the hidden auburn hues of her hair.

‘Yes?’ He lifted his eyes momentarily.

‘No, not a question. I meant, you should insert your own name in the sentence. You said “Claire”.’

‘Right. Juh mapel Jonathon,’ he corrected, feeling like a stupid schoolboy.

‘That was lovely. It was so much better,’ she complimented and he felt absurdly pleased at having mastered the simple sentence. She cocked her head to one side, studying him, and this time he couldn’t escape to the window. He was already there. That look of hers, as if she was trying to fathom the depths of his soul, had unnerved him and then aroused him since the lesson had started. Certainly, women had looked at him before. Being the object of their attentions wasn’t new. He knew they found him attractive: physically, fiscally, socially. His attraction was multi-faceted. But no woman ever looked at him that way. She wasn’t measuring him, she was searching him. What did she see? That made him a little nervous.

He’d got up to move so many times she must think he had a problem. He couldn’t very well explain he was moving to spare her the obvious sight of an erection well in progress. Fawn breeches had not been his friend lately. First tea, now this.

‘May I ask you a few questions?’ Her tone was softer now, more ladylike as she searched. It better matched the soft shades of her eyes than the scold she’d given him. ‘You can translate the language? You can write it?’

‘Yes. Quite well.’ A hint of defensiveness crept into his tone. Did she think him an entirely ignorant buffoon? His pride stung. For a moment he thought it might be better if she did see his erection. Better that than to think he was illiterate.

‘How did you work with your tutors in the past? Did you read from sheets like the one I had for you this morning?’

‘Yes, we’d read passages out of books.’ He tried to guess where she was going with this. ‘What does that have to do with anything, Miss Welton?’ Now he was feeling defensive on behalf of his instructors. He’d had the best.

‘We won’t be doing that any more. I don’t think it will work for you. If it was going to work, it would have worked by now.’ She tapped her chin thoughtfully with one long finger. ‘I have a hunch, Mr Lashley, that you may suffer from performance anxiety.’

Clearly she had not seen the state of his breeches.

‘Whoa, wait a minute, Miss Welton, I assure you I do not have “performance anxiety”.’ If anything, this morning’s debacle proved just the opposite. He was fully functioning, all right, aroused by a woman he barely knew because she wore a pale-green dress and did gorgeous things with her mouth.

She gave a delicate cough. ‘There are many types of performance anxiety, Mr Lashley. I am not entirely sure what sort of performance anxiety you are referring to, but I am referring to the idea that when you’ve spoken French in the past, you’ve felt as if you were on display or under judgement and it hampered your ability to perform the task.’

Jonathon gave a snort. ‘And you can solve this problem?’ He already feared she couldn’t, through no fault of her own. He wasn’t telling her everything about his apparent disability.

She nodded without hesitation, never suspecting he was holding out on her. ‘Yes, I believe I can. It may require some unorthodox teaching methods.’ Ropes and chairs came to mind unbidden. Perhaps he hadn’t been wrong after all. ‘We won’t be sitting at tables and reading from books.’ Oh, so no ropes and chairs. ‘I believe reading, the presence of visual cues, has been part of the problem. When you read, you see the words, you don’t hear them. You pronounce them as we would in English. While the French may have the same letters in the alphabet as the English, they don’t always have the same sounds. You need to hear the language, not see it. We’ll work from there.’

Jonathon raised a dark brow, in part impressed with her theory, but also doubtful. He really ought to tell her the rest of it. ‘Countless tutors have tried.’ It was unfair to hold back the last piece. It wasn’t that he couldn’t speak French. Only that he couldn’t any more. At one time, he’d been perfectly fluent on all levels; before he’d gone to war, before he’d lost Thomas. Before his life had been put on hold.

‘They haven’t tried my method. Are you willing? We’ll start with simply having you repeat my phrases and then we’ll eventually move on to conversations where you will construct your own responses. We won’t be doing any of this sitting at a table in a stuffy old room. Tomorrow, we’ll walk in the gardens so you might feel more at ease, more natural.’ Ah, the performance anxiety theory again. He had to give her points for trying.

The clock on the mantel chimed. It was one. The lesson was over. ‘Au revoir, Monsieur Lashley. À la prochaine.’

‘Alla pro-shane... Claire.’ Such familiarity was bold of him. His voice hovered over her name, drawing it out as if it were a new discovery. In its way it was precisely that. He couldn’t think of her as Miss Welton any more. Miss Welton belonged to a wallflower of a woman, but this woman, the woman he’d met in the library, had been anything but retiring. This woman had fought for him. Claire Welton was tenacious.

He let his eyes hold hers as if she were a woman he’d met at a ball and found interesting. Something flickered in her eyes and she dropped her gaze first. Apparently tenacity had its limits and while those limits extended to throwing herself in front of doors and saying provocative things like ‘performance anxiety’ and ‘watch my mouth’, it drew the line at returning a man’s extended gaze. It was an interesting dichotomy to be sure. Claire Welton was not all she seemed. She had layers.

He wouldn’t mind peeling them back, not so much like peeling an onion—that just left the onion in a shambles—but like the petals of a rose, where the petals were pulled back not to ruin, but to reveal.

Chapter Five

The garden worked well for him, at least. Jonathon was more settled, more focused the next day. Claire noted immediately that the words came more freely for him now that his mind had other things to occupy his attention and he was less aware of being under scrutiny. Claire wished she could say the same for herself. She might have resolved some of his performance anxiety, but she’d not helped her own.

Garden paths weren’t assisting her at all. In her desire to help him relax, she’d overlooked a few potential barriers to her own comfort, namely that the garden held an intimacy the library lacked. There were no dusty books, only the lovely faint scent of her mother’s roses. There were no long tables to enforce distance, instead, they were expected to walk side by side, her hand on his arm out of necessity if not propriety, and they’d been strolling for the better part of an hour.

Be careful what you wish for. She was well aware this was the very thing she’d coveted just a few nights ago in May’s drawing room: to stand beside Jonathon, to place her hand on his arm. She wouldn’t lie. She did revel in the opportunity to be so close to him and for such an extended period of time. But it also made it hard to concentrate on anything not him. Still, she made a fairly good go of it. The garden—le jardin—provided all sorts of conversation starters and vocabulary to practise, from words like l’arbre to sentences like ouvrez la porte.

‘I can imagine what that word looks like on paper.’ Jonathon laughed as they practised the last sentence. ‘Ouvrez. What kind of word is that?’ Today, he was the Jonathon she knew, all laughter and light and easy perfection. Gone was the cold, dangerously exciting man from the library.

‘A French one and don’t imagine it. I think that’s your whole problem. You see the words with English eyes.’ Very attractive eyes, but English none the less.

He smiled, a smile that crinkled those eyes and lit up his face when he looked at her. She felt that smile to her toes. ‘Hopefully, I’ve proved I’m not a complete dolt.’

She heard the search for affirmation in it. How strange to think Jonathon Lashley needed that from her. Everyone adored him. Everyone found him perfect. She returned the smile and gave him the assurance he sought. ‘I never thought you were.’ Far from it, if only he knew. ‘Now that we know we’re going the right direction, it will keep getting better.’

‘Everything depends on it.’ They reached the end of a path, their steps bringing them to the fence on the edge of the property. Jonathon paused as they turned and she sensed the hesitation in him. ‘But you know that, apparently. May I ask how? Yesterday, you mentioned the Vienna posting.’ His dark brows drew together. ‘It’s not something that is widely known, at least not the part where I have to demonstrate oral competence.’

Claire worried her lip. She didn’t have a good explanation for that. She should have been more careful with what she blurted out in the heat of an argument. ‘I did not mean to offend you.’ She’d promised herself she would be good today. She’d been given a second chance—no mopping up spills, no blocking entrances. Nothing unladylike.

‘No,’ he answered quickly. ‘I’m not offended, just surprised that you knew.’

‘The appointment is important to you?’ Claire asked, steering away from directly answering him. She didn’t want to get May in trouble. They began to walk again, their steps slow as they moved towards the house. His other hand had moved to cover hers where it lay on his arm. It was a gesture he’d likely done a hundred times with any number of ladies. He was probably unaware he’d even done it. She knew it meant nothing and yet her mind was fixated on it, just as it fixated on the sweep of her skirts against his leg as they walked, as if they were a real couple, as if they belonged together. It was an easy fantasy to fall in to.

He nodded. ‘It means everything to me. The appointment is a chance to do some good in the world. To stop war, to find peace, to rebuild a continent one decade at a time. It’s a chance to make a difference.’

Claire hazarded a glance up into his face, surprised to see his merry blue eyes serious. He meant every word. Here was another brief glimpse into a different Jonathon Lashley than the one she was used to seeing.

She nodded slowly, digesting the import of his words. ‘I think that’s very noble.’ It wasn’t the passion behind them that made them noble, it was his motivation. He didn’t want this for his glory, but for the good it would do others. ‘You have a cause. I didn’t know, didn’t realise.’ She wondered what else she didn’t know about him. Yesterday and today had proven there were depths to plumb that went far beyond his smile and good looks.

‘You’re not expected to know. It’s hardly an appropriate topic of discussion during the waltz or a quadrille.’ Jonathon smiled, but she recognised the tactic as one of avoidance. He was trying to dismiss the topic.

Claire shot him a sideways look from beneath the brim of her bonnet. ‘You’ve given yourself a difficult task. Empires thrive on wars, it seems. It takes war to build them up and wars inevitably follow when they collapse, leaving uncertainty in their wake.’

Jonathon nodded. ‘I fear we may be losing another empire and it’s too soon. The Ottomans can’t last and they’ve been the instruments of their own downfall. It’s too soon to lose them after Napoleon. There is still so much instability since 1814. I can only imagine the land grabs that would go on. It’s been only seven years. If not handled correctly, Central Europe will erupt.’

She listened intently as Jonathon elaborated on Slavic states and nationalism, Phanariots and the Christian Millet. How had she not known this side of him? How could she have known? She’d never had any time with him, only seen him from a distance. Did anyone know this about him? The jolt of unlooked-for jealousy startled her. Was this a side of himself he kept strictly for those who knew him best? Claire was suddenly envious of any and all of those friends, those close enough to bear witness to his thoughts, his passions. ‘And Miss Northam, does she share these opinions?’ Perhaps that was the blonde beauty’s appeal?

* * *

She was staring at him. He feared for a moment he’d talked her into a stupor. Usually he was so very careful not to overwhelm people with his opinions. But Claire had seemed enrapt. She’d been such a good listener. Once he’d got started, he’d felt encouraged to continue. Only when she’d asked her question did he realise how he must have run on. ‘Miss Northam? Oh, no. We’ve never discussed it at length. She prefers to talk about fashion and society.’ Jonathon answered easily as if those preferences were entirely natural and expected.

‘Of course,’ Claire said shortly and Jonathon recognised his mistake. For being a usually skilled diplomat, he’d managed to step on Claire’s feelings with regularity. She was certainly interested in goings-on abroad. She’d learned Turkish, after all. He should have anticipated she’d view his response as a veiled reprimand.

‘I find a well-read woman refreshing, however. It doesn’t have to be all fashion and gossip.’ He hurried to cover his unintended slur.

She gave him a wry smile. ‘You don’t need to say that for my benefit. I am well aware my intellectual appetites are not appealing to many men. I would never ask you to pretend.’ He didn’t care for the coldness he heard in her voice. Had she learned that lesson the hard way? It was one more thing he didn’t know about her. Had there been suitors? Had they been driven away by her inquisitive mind? Neither did he like the implication that he might be capable of duplicity.

‘I never pretend,’ Jonathon said solemnly. ‘Do you? Were you pretending to enjoy my discourse on the Ottoman Empire?’

‘Why no, I...’ Her protest was drowned out by the warmth of his smile.

‘I’ve made my point, then. We can be honest with one another.’ He gave her a considering look. ‘It’s fair to say, though, that you are different than I expected. You’re not at all what you seem.’ He was pushing the boundaries of propriety now. He should stop. What he was about to say in order to justify his comment was hardly appropriate either.

Her sherry eyes narrowed in wary speculation. ‘Different how?’

‘In the past, I’ve had the distinct impression that you didn’t want to be noticed.’ And your dresses have become much more attractive.

‘You can hardly have failed to notice that I am something of a bluestocking, Mr Lashley. Men don’t tend to enjoy that sort of female companionship.’ Her response was polite, but there was a cold honesty to her words. They’d reached the back terrace, their starting point, and arguably a signal that he should depart. Jonathon chose to ignore the signal.

‘Is that why you’ve set yourself apart until now?’ Jonathon ventured, a suspicion taking root. Had she set herself apart out of deference to her intellectualism and her desire to preserve it instead of sacrificing it to society’s whim? If so, it was done at great cost to herself. She had to know such a choice would leave her unwed, alone. Her modest dresses, her quiet demeanour would have driven off any man before he got within twenty feet of her. But this Season, things had undoubtedly changed. Those dresses were certainly not designed to repel.