Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase Page B

had met the front of the saddle.
    She’d got him so befuddled that he’d ridden straight past the turning.
    He hadn’t had time to fully collect his wits before she climbed over the fence, offering him an excellent view of her petticoats and stockings.
    It was her typical hoydenish behavior, the same she’d exhibited when they’d been together in the past. She thought of him as a brother. That was why she didn’t mind her skirts and that was why she hadn’t hesitated to climb up on his horse behind him.
    But he wasn’t her brother and he wasn’t the boy he’d used to be, deaf, dumb, and blind to a flurry of feminine undergarments. Not to mention that in girlhood she wouldn’t have worn stockings like those, with their alluring blue embroidery, or petticoats trimmed in excessively feminine lace. And in those days, she hadn’t owned shapely legs and splendidly turned ankles—or if she had, he hadn’t noticed.
    After he’d got these matters sorted out and his reproductive organs calmed down and his mind functioning again, he stepped over the fence to stand beside her as she finished reading the ornate tribute to the first balloon ascension in England.
    At the end she looked at him and said, “Isn’t it amazing? This quiet meadow saw such a momentous event. How wonderful that they’ve marked the spot.” Page 55
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    “You said you never got to see the sights,” he said. And as vexed as he’d been—and still was—he’d felt sorry for her. When he was a boy, her stepfather had often taken him along on journeys. Lord Rathbourne had always taken the time to point out the sights and tell stories about them, especially the bloodcurdling stories boys liked, about grisly murders and ghosts and such.
    It seemed odd and unfair that a girl with such a vivid imagination, who craved change and excitement, had had so little opportunity of sightseeing.
    “I knew nothing about it,” she said. “Only imagine. Nearly fifty years ago. What must the people living here have thought when they saw it?”
    “They were frightened,” he said. “Suppose you’d been a villager of that time.” He gazed up at the leaden sky. “You look up and suddenly appears a gigantic thing where only birds and clouds are supposed to appear.”
    “I don’t know if I’d be frightened.”
    “Not you specifically,” he said. “But if you’d been a villager, an ordinary person.” Which was inconceivable. The very last thing Olivia was was ordinary.
    “I’ve always wanted to go up in a hot-air balloon,” she said.
    No surprise there.
    “How thrilling it must be,” she said, “to look down on all the world from a great height.”
    “Going up to the great height is all very well,” he said. “Coming down is another story.
    Lunardi had no notion how to steer the thing. He brought along oars, thinking he could row through the air.”
    “But he tried,” she said. “He had a vision, and he pursued it. A Noble Quest. And here’s a stone marking the occasion, for all posterity, as it says.”
    “Do you not find the prose inflated?” he said. It was a dreadful pun, but he couldn’t resist.
    “ Inflated . Oh, Lisle. That is—” She gave a snort of laughter, which she quickly stifled.
    “Abominable.”
    “He took with him a cat, a dog, a pigeon, and a hamper of provisions,” he said. “The provisions I understand. The animals I do not. In any event, the pigeon soon escaped, and air travel disagreed with the cat, who was let off a short distance from London.” She laughed then, truly and fully, a velvety cascade of sound that startled him. It was nothing like the silvery laughter so many women affected. It was low and throaty, a smoky sound that slid down his spine.
    It stirred dangerous images—of bed curtains moving in a breeze, and tumbled bedclothes—and it disarmed him at the same time. He smiled stupidly at her.
    “A good thing, too,” she