The Louise Allen Collection. Louise Allen
‘No, I suppose I don’t. Truth be told, I always used to spinelessly do what was required of me or just pretend horrid things were not happening. I never did anything as positive as sulking. Is it effective?’
‘It’s a game,’ Adam admitted with a grin. ‘Emily and Sally would sulk and pout and wheedle and I would pretend to be hard and uncaring and then, nine times out of ten, I would give them what they wanted. They were only practising the tricks they now play on their husbands.’
Decima chewed thoughtfully. ‘Without wanting to criticise your sisters, that seems rather…unsatisfactory. I don’t think I would want a relationship where I had to pout and wheedle to get things. I would rather discuss it and argue my case.’
‘As you do with Charlton?’ he enquired.
Decima felt herself flush. ‘As I intend to do in future, yes.’
‘Leave the dishes,’ Adam said as she began to gather them up. ‘No housework on New Year’s Day. Wrap up, and we’ll go and look at the horses.’
It was all right for men, Decima thought wryly as she went to put on her thick shawl and check on Pru. They just issued orders and the women and servants did as they were told. For a moment she was tempted to announce that she intended to sit by the fire with Pru reading all day, then she remembered what Adam had said about playing in the snow.
‘Pru, I’ll be outside if you need me,’ she called, seizing her gloves and running downstairs in her heaviest boots.
Adam was already in the stables as she made her away across the yard. She began to skirt the treacherous slick of ice where Bates had fallen, then looked at it with new eyes. Every year she and Augusta skated on the frozen mere half a mile from the house; how was this any different?
She took a run up and slid a full twelve feet, arms waving until she caught her balance. Laughing, she went into the stables to join Adam.
The clear ripple of amusement brought him to look over the door of the stall where he was forking fresh straw. It was even more charming than her giggle. Damn it. Why couldn’t the woman do something to give him a disgust of her? Last evening, respectable and staid as it had been, had done nothing to put his unruly feelings back on track.
At first it had seemed to work just as he had hoped: formality, social chitchat and unexceptional subject matter had reduced Decima to a shadow of her vibrant self.
She had agreed politely with everything he’d said, followed all his conversational leads, never ventured a single opinion of her own and had sat, hands folded, feet together by the hearth. If it were possible for a tall, attractive woman to become invisible, she had almost managed it. It should have made him feel safe. Instead, he hated it. It was as though someone had snuffed a candle, leaving him alone in the darkness.
He pushed away the enormity of what that implied. ‘What is so amusing?’
Decima twinkled at him as she went towards Fox’s stall. ‘I’ll show you when we go outside. Hello, handsome!’
Fox put his head over the half-door, pushing expectantly at her caressing hand. ‘Yes, I have sugar. This is outrageous cupboard love, you wretch.’ She turned to Adam, still rubbing the one spot on the big stallion’s nose that seemed to reduce him to a blissful trance. He found himself watching her hands. ‘I have been thinking of breeding from my mare, Spindrift. You wouldn’t consider putting Fox to her?’
She said it so practically, without the trace of a blush. Adam swallowed. ‘He is a big horse—seventeen hands.’ Now how, exactly, did one put this without becoming coarse?
‘You think the foal would be too large for her?’ Decima regarded Fox, head on one side. ‘She is sixteen hands, I am sure that would not be a problem. Of course, we would have to draw up a proper agreement and I would naturally pay the correct fee for a successful foal.’
‘She’s a large mare.’ It was all he could think of saying.
‘She needs to be,’ Decima countered with a grimace. ‘What do you think? Obviously you want to be careful about bloodlines, but I can let you see Spindrift’s. She’s one-quarter Arab.’
‘Yes. I don’t see why not. We’ll discuss it.’ It was a feeble answer, but Adam turned back abruptly to his task. The thought of putting his stallion to her mare produced such a flood of primitive emotions in him that he didn’t think he could face her. Decima appeared to have not the slightest idea of her own effect on him, of the earthy sensuality she exuded when she was not being the prim and proper spinster miss. Even when she was being prim and proper, come to that. Surely men had made overtures to her before, surely she was aware of the effect she had?
They finished in the stables and went outside. ‘Now, tell me, what made you laugh?’ Anything to stop thinking about her, tall, slender, lithe and naked in his arms.
‘This.’ Decima took a few running steps, then slid elegantly across the ice slick, arms out for seemingly effortless balance. He froze, terrified that she would fall. She turned and slid back, laughing at his expression. ‘Can’t you skate?’
‘No, I’ve never tried. Stop it, you’ll fall and break something.’
Decima came to a controlled halt a few feet away. ‘I will not! I am an excellent skater, watch.’ And to his horror she took a gliding step and spun round, full circle. ‘See?’
‘Come off the ice. Now.’ Adam felt his voice catch in his throat. He did not know what it was: the sudden vision of her lying injured on the treacherous surface or the reality of her, her hair flying out behind her, her cheeks pink, her bosom rising and falling with her breathing.
Something must have shown in his face because she stopped and slid carefully towards him. ‘Very well, if you insist.’ Her voice was meek, but rebellion flared in her eyes and Adam realised he didn’t trust her an inch not to pirouette away at the last moment. As she came within reach he seized her arm and spun her off the ice onto the trodden snow. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he stated harshly.
Decima gasped as she was jerked against Adam, her arm held in a grip that left her in no doubt that it could close like a vice around her wrist if he so chose. ‘Let me go.’ There was heat in those grey-green eyes, a spark as though flint had struck iron. ‘Don’t be so dictatorial, Adam—you are as bad as Charlton.’
But that was not true; being reproved by her half-brother felt nothing like this. That provoked resentment and embarrassment, but not a flare of temper to match his, not a pounding of her heart as though she had been running. And she would not be racked with the shameful desire that he would drag her closer, fix those hard arms round her until she could not struggle and could only yield to him.
Adam’s anger—if that was what it was—flickered and was gone, replaced by rueful amusement. ‘To be compared to Charlton is an insult indeed. Just promise me you will not slide on the ice again. I don’t want to have to set your broken leg.’
‘I promise.’ She looked up at him, struck yet again by the novelty of a man she could look in the face without having to stoop. ‘I am a very good skater, though.’
‘I am sure you are, and if you had proper skates and a doctor within five miles I would not turn a hair. And don’t pout at me.’ He let her go abruptly and walked away towards a wide stretch of virgin snow.
‘I wasn’t,’ Decima protested, stamping after him through the crunching whiteness. ‘And if I was, why shouldn’t I?’
Adam turned, his eyes on her mouth. ‘Because it makes me want to nibble your lower lip, if you must know.’ He carried on walking.
‘Oh!’ Decima stared at his retreating back. Nibble? He did not sound very pleased at the prospect, more like someone warning a child that if they did not stop doing something naughty they would have to be spanked. There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that, or anything to do, other than to retreat inside, all injured dignity, or pretend she had not heard him. Nibble? Would