The Wedding Wager. Deborah Hale

      “Audio, audiere, audivi, auditus.” His speech organs produced the words by rote, while Morse found himself absorbed in the contemplation of Leonora’s hand.

      Her fingers were slender and tapered. The nails were neatly kept, like five tiny translucent seashells. For all its daintiness, it was neither weak nor vapid. Instead it moved with an expressive, purposeful grace, which Morse found fascinating and strangely beautiful.

      He scarcely realized what he was doing when his own hand reached for hers. She froze. With a stifled gasp, her recitation of Latin verbs ceased.

      Once, in India, Morse had handled a priceless religious artifact, exquisitely carved in luminous pale jade. He held Leonora’s hand with the same breathless reverence, savoring its warmth and smoothness. It seemed the most natural impulse in the world to lift it to his lips in homage.

      His curious trance shattered when Leonora ripped her hand from his grasp.

      She found her voice again. “What is the meaning of this? How dare you take such liberties?”

      Her face a livid crimson and her eyes gaping wide, she backed toward the door.

      “I was just noticing what lovely hands you have.” Morse wondered that such a little thing had obviously upset her so. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

      She stared at her hand as if she was seeing it for the first time, and was not pleased in the least with what she beheld. “You would do well to take more notice of your studies, Sergeant Archer, and less of my…person.” The last word came out in a strangled squeak.

      Morse endeavored to suppress a smile. He had never imagined his icy, implacable martinet could appear so flustered. And over such a trifle.

      “Since you are obviously not…attending to the lesson, perhaps we had better adjourn…for breakfast. Afterward, I expect you to read the next twenty pages of Mr. Butler’s Hudebras.”

      Morse opened his mouth to ask where she would be while he was reading. Before he could voice the question, though, Leonora had slipped out the door and fled.

      She never did come to breakfast.

      For the first time since setting foot in Laurelwood, Morse was able to relax and enjoy a meal in peace. As he tucked ravenously into a plate of eggs and broiled veal kidneys, he pondered the unaccountable events of the morning. What was there in an innocent touch and a trifling compliment to throw Leonora Freemantle into such a bother? He had no success in puzzling it out.

      After a leisurely breakfast he returned to the library and found it deserted. For lack of any better diversion, he did read a few pages of Hudebras. When it failed to stir his interest, he got up and walked over to the window.

      The bright winter sunshine and the steady drip of water from the eaves told Morse the day must be mild. Reasoning that a bit of fresh air might revive his powers of concentration, he called for his hat, greatcoat and walking stick.

      Ambling along the path between high cherry laurel hedges, Morse found himself able to bear more and more weight on his injured leg. With a bit of regular exercise, perhaps he would regain his former easy stride.

      By the time he returned to the house, he was in a better humor than he’d enjoyed since coming to Laurelwood. Whatever he had done to disrupt the endless routine of lessons, it was well worth trying again. If compliments flustered Leonora so…Morse chuckled at the very thought of how she’d respond if he called her by that name. Surely she had other features he could admire the next time he needed a respite from his studies.

      Her slender, graceful neck, for instance. If he nuzzled her sensitive nape, she might take to her bed for several days with a fit of the vapors.

      Morse grinned to himself, anticipating her reaction.

      Immensely pleased at the cleverness of his plan, he took up his book again and devoured nearly a hundred pages of it by teatime.

      Chapter Four

      He had kissed her hand.

      Several hours later it still tingled faintly and the memory of Morse’s lips on her skin continued to prompt a most ridiculous blush in Leonora’s cheeks. She had retreated to the sanctuary of her bedchamber, not trusting herself to face him again that day. On no account must that man see the foolish reaction he’d excited in her.

      Pacing the carpet runner beside her bed, Leonora tried to dismiss the whole episode for the silly trifle she knew it to be. No doubt Morse Archer had kissed the hand of many a woman. More than their hands, too, unless she missed her guess.

      Through the window she spied him striding the grounds of Laurelwood, his limp much less noticeable than when he’d first arrived. Some unaccountable force kept her rooted to the spot, watching Morse Archer until he disappeared from view.

      Quite against her will, Leonora found herself slipping into a shameful reverie. Unbidden images cascaded into her mind, piquing her senses. Of all the places on women’s bodies where the attractive sergeant might have bestowed kisses.

      On their lips, of course. Perhaps a bare neck or shoulder had enticed him to nuzzle. Might he have dropped one, delicate as a whisper, upon some pretty ear? Or pressed his face into a head of tousled tresses?

      As each notion took hold of her, Leonora’s hand—her kissed hand—strayed to that part of her own person. Setting her lips aquiver as one fingertip brushed over them, gliding from shoulder, to neck, to ear. Extracting the pins from her hair.

      When at last it fell in a fine, ebony billow around her shoulders, her strangely possessed hand reached up and threaded her fingers through the strands. Feeling and appreciating its delicate, silky texture for perhaps the first time in her life.

      Catching sight of herself in the looking glass, Leonora almost did not recognize the face that stared back at her. That woman had a strange softness about her features. It made her look far younger than Leonora’s twenty-seven sensible years. Even her severe little spectacles could not disguise the dreamy shimmer in her gray-green eyes.

      Leonora had seen that look before. Her stomach curdled and her throat constricted at the memory of it.

      Mother.

      Downy and pensive. Humming a little tune to herself. Fondling a nosegay of posies from her latest admirer. Such looks had meant only one thing. Clarissa Freemantle had welcomed a new suitor into her life. To Leonora, it had always spelled trouble.

      Setting her mouth in a taut line, she squared her shoulders and willed that mooning creature in the mirror to vacate the premises forthwith. She would not repeat her mother’s mistakes, least of all over a shiftless, insolent ex-Rifleman that circumstances had forced upon her.

      Leonora thrust her spectacles back up to the bridge of her nose. Plucking a hairbrush from the top of her dressing table, she coerced her locks into submission, plaiting them into such tight braids they made her head ache.

      Dickon, the footman, almost dropped his water kettle the next morning when he arrived at Morse’s door to find the sergeant already awake.

      “Don’t just stand there gaping, man.” Morse plucked the steaming kettle from Dickon’s hand and splashed a generous measure into his washbasin. “Lay out my clothes while I shave.”

      “I didn’t reckon to find you in such fine fettle this morning, sir.” The burly footman rubbed his forehead. “Not after the quantity of cider you put away last night and how merry we was making.”

      Morse worked his shaving soap into a good lather and smeared it on his face, inhaling the tangy aroma. “I’ve been up before dawn and in the thick of a battle after far worse debauches than last night’s wee tipple, man.”

      He whistled a few bars of a Portuguese drinking song, the words of which he had never understood. “Sometimes a fellow’s all the better in the morning for a spot of revelry the night before.”

      “If you say