Free Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) by Lara Archer

force.
    Damn .
    Whether any of the good townspeople openly acknowledged it or not, May Day was part of pagan tradition, from long before the coming of Christianity, a true rite of spring. The May Pole was a spear thrust up to pierce the frosts of winter, a symbol of fertility, of the surging energy of the newborn earth.
    The lithe line of Mary’s body made him want to see her stretched out naked on the grass. With his naked body stretched out over top of hers. He willed her to look at him, to see the heat she sparked in his eyes.
    But she was paying no attention at all to him. Her gaze was solidly focused on her task.
    Was it really so hard to guide a ribbon through a six-inch ring, or was she pointedly ignoring him?
    His money was on “pointedly ignoring him.”
    Miss Lawton, though, had no such compunctions. She tapped him boldly on the forearm to bring his attention back to her, gazed straight at him with her robin’s-egg-blue eyes, and twittered, “What do you think, Lord Parkhurst? Tomorrow for the May Pole dance, shall I choose a blue ribbon to hold or a pink one? Or perhaps yellow? My dress shall be blue, but I do love the freshness of pink, and the brightness of yellow. They put one in mind of azaleas and daisies, don’t you think? Most appropriate for the season. And one wishes to celebrate the coming of spring with the proper enthusiasm.”
    “Indeed,” he said, having nothing else sensible to reply.
    “And shall you join us around the May Pole, my lord?” Her lashes fluttered again. “To dance with the other young people?”
    “I…I had not thought about it either way.” Oh, but if Mary Wilkins were going to dance, how could he resist? As they had from time immemorial, the unmarried men would face one way, the unmarried women the other, winding their long ribbons around the tall pole, drawing tighter and tighter until the dancers had no choice but to press up close to one another, sweated and laughing, their blood high and coloring their cheeks. The symbolic meaning was unmistakable, almost obscene.
    Desire. Pleasure. Sex.
    Heat washed upwards from his knees through his thighs, and all the way up to fume his brain. It made his loins feel heavy, and his head light.
    Ah, but if he and Mary did join the dancers, she would probably slip by him each time without looking at him, avoiding the brush of his arms and shoulders. She would freeze him out.
    The heat in his body chilled considerably.
    “Oh, but you must dance,” chirped Annabel, startling him from his thoughts. “The lord of the manor should join his people in their festivities. It is an absolute duty .”
    He managed to smile at her, but chanced another glance at Mary. She had three ribbons strung through the ring, and was reaching down for yet another. Most efficient.
    A memory came to him suddenly, of Mary at perhaps seven or eight years old, daring him to race up the trunk of an enormous oak tree. They’d both scraped themselves mightily on the bark as they fought to gain the highest branches. And when they’d reached the top and looked out over all of Birchford and the surrounding countryside, they’d both gasped at the sight—all that rolling green stretched out beneath them, and the clouds looming huge and white, closer than ever. And there was Parkhurst Hall, its usual majesty reduced to dollhouse proportions.
    Mary had sighed and said, “This is how giants must see the world.” They’d both been quite earnest about giants at the time.
    And, eyeing his suddenly fragile ancestral home, he’d answered her: “A giant this tall could destroy all of Birchford with just a few stomps of his boots.”
    “Oh, no!” she’d said. “It could be a kind giant, who’d give us rides, and plow all our fields with his hair comb, and build new stone cottages for the farmers using just his fingertips.”
    He smiled to remember it now. That had been childhood Mary in a nutshell—daring and imaginative and immensely kind, all at once. Which, now