Free Elisabeth Fairchild by The Love Knot Page B

Fletcher’s horse clanked into the clearing and Fletcher swung from the saddle, Aurora decided there was an awkward tension in being left alone with a man who was not a relative, or in any way known to her or her family, for the purpose of teaching him what came so naturally to her. With five brothers, she was used to men telling her what to do, not the other way around. This strange fellow whom she had struck a bargain of shared knowledge with, this exquisite who watched her with as much amusement in his gaze as she must possess in watching him, turned her life strangely upside down. He turned her understanding of men upside down. There was amusement to be enjoyed in such a topsy-turvy state of affairs, but beneath her amusement there ran a thread of uncertainty and fascination that made her every moment alone with Miles Fletcher an adventure.
    Fletcher, all unknowing of the effect he had on her peace of mind, relieved his horse of its burden. Handing her one of the bows and taking up the other, along with a quiver of arrows, he asked expectantly, “How do we begin, Miss Ramsay? I await your wisdom.”
    Aurora liked the ring of his words. She liked too, the look of anticipation he concentrated on her. She met with something foreign, even exotic, in this strange peacock of a man whose gill flower blue eyes roved over her with the same intense interest with which she had seen him examine priceless marbles in the statue gallery. Their endeavors possessed an exhilarating sense of adventure, an intoxicating sense of worth.
    “We begin with the stringing of the bow,” she said with a show of confidence betrayed by the tremor in her hands as she lifted the string. Miles made her nervous and self-conscious. He was too attentive a pupil, watching and listening with lively curiosity, head cocked to one side, eyes twinkling, and mouth curved in an unshakable half smile.
    Surely the silly flutter in her ribcage would go away given enough time and a moment’s relief from the unsettling focus of the man’s gaze. Yet, Aurora’s hands betrayed her. As she showed him the method of stringing that involved stepping through the bow to use one’s leg as leverage in bending bow to meet string, so intently did dancing blue eyes follow her every move, hanging on her every word, studying her with a thoroughness she had never met before, she could not even begin to hope he did not notice the shaking of her hands.
    “Will you be so good as to repeat that last bit?” He raised his quizzing glass and bent to more closely observe the movements of her leg.
    She obliged him, but was struck by the notion as she did so, that his glass remained focused on her nether region far too long. Aurora bent her head, bringing them eye-to-eye.
    “Did you get it that time, Mr. Fletcher?”

    She gasped. Here was evidence of the rough grain of crass masculinity lurking beneath polished veneer after all. She was almost relieved to find it.
    He went on, unperturbed. “I am, you see, an insatiable observer of beauty.”
    She shot a glare at him, mouth popping open with the idea that such brass deserved a snappy rejoinder. Nothing occurred to her. Her customary responses for this sort of male behavior simply could not be thrown in the face of this peacock. “Where is your sister, Mr. Fletcher?” was all she could manage. “Does she mean to join us?”
    He neatly stepped one glossy boot into his bow and precisely followed her example in stringing it, smiling contritely when he was done. “My sister is a painter, and like most who are artistically gifted, she tends to lose herself in her work. She will not have wandered far.” To prove his point he whistled a bit of a tune. When he paused, from a distance a whistled refrain picked up where he left off.
    Another painter, Aurora almost sighed. Was she the only woman in the world who took no joy in watercolors?
    “If I promise to refrain from further impertinences, will you continue your instruction?” The