“No one will miss us. Everyone is either eating or dancing, and they’ll continue for hours.”
“Lydia,” Tanner warned.
Lydia sighed again but took his arm obediently and allowed him to lead her away from the summerhouse. When they were gone, Selena glanced uneasily up at Kyle. She was surprised to find his expression thoughtful.
“You don’t mean to call him out, do you?” she asked.
Kyle met her gaze. “As it happens, I was considering something quite different. What would you think about offering him the position as factor of Montrose?”
“I think,” Selena said with a slow smile, “such a solution would benefit you both.”
Kyle nodded. “As a planter’s son, Parkington has the farming experience I lack. And he has far greater sense than I credited him with.”
“And honor, as well. He would make Lydia a good husband.”
“Oh, no you don’t, Moonwitch. I’ll admit I like the lad, and he seems to deal with her better than I do, but I’m not willing just yet to give him Lydia’s hand. He’ll have to prove himself first.”
Selena shuddered. “Thank heaven he is too much a gentleman to elope with her.”
“I don’t know about that. If Parkington were willing to consider an elopement, I might give him my blessing, just to get Lydia off my hands.”
“Kyle, you don’t mean it!”
“No.” He smiled in fond remembrance. “Actually, Lydia surprised me, offering to find a position herself. Perhaps there’s hope for her yet.”
“Well, at least you don’t mean to take Mr. Parkington to task for merely refusing to elope with her.”
“I couldn’t—” Kyle’s grin was full of mischief and affection as he reached out and ran a languid forefinger along her collarbone “—for then I’d have to acknowledge being here with you. And if you think your parrot raised some eyebrows, you can imagine the scandal if it became known I’d been ravishing my beautiful wife.”
Selena thought about protesting his choice of words, but when Kyle’s finger dipped between her breasts, the thought fled. “When must you return to town?” she asked, holding his gaze.
“I promised Angel I would be there tonight when the ball ended.”
“But you don’t have to go just yet?”
Her tone was breathless and entirely unreserved, with even a hint of eagerness. Kyle’s eyebrows lifted. This was his totally modest, straitlaced wife? “No, I don’t have to go just yet,” he said, amused.
“Good.” Sliding her fingers through the heavy, dark waves of Kyle’s hair, Selena leaned forward and ran her tongue lightly over the surface of his lips. “Because I seem to remember an unsettled question as to which one of us ‘carries on’ the loudest.”
Kyle laughed, and the laughter stayed inside him as he surrendered gracefully and gave himself over to the lovely siren in his arms.
Chapter Sixteen
Late June, the beginning of full summer. Long days of sweltering shade and lingering twilight. The smell of fresh-scythed grass and baking earth, of waxy magnolias and sweet, sweet jasmine. The night sounds of croaking frogs and chirping cicadas. The melodic trill of a mockingbird. Selena grew to love the now-familiar scents and sounds of her new home, in spite of the merciless heat that was unrelieved by the trade winds she was accustomed to on her island.
Life at Montrose was quieter after the ball. Or perhaps, Selena decided, it merely seemed so with Bea and Thaddeus gone. They had departed two days afterward for their town house in Natchez to a chorus of sobs and regrets, even though they would only be a few miles away.
Selena missed Bea’s good-natured chatter, for while she had the plantation and the girls to occupy her time, she saw little of Kyle. During the week following the ball, he was busier than ever. When he’d offered Tanner Parkington the position as factor, the young man had accepted with such eagerness that Kyle thought he might have to restrain Parkington physically to keep him from sleeping out in the fields. And in addition to establishing Parkington as factor, Kyle still had nightly duties as guardian of Heaven’s Gate.
And yet the moments Selena did share with him gave her hope, for amazingly he seemed entirely willing to forget he had been forced to marry her.
Selena was fervently looking forward to the time when Kyle could at least spend his nights at home. But as it happened, the day Angel’s cousin arrived from Nashville to assume responsibility as chief bruiser at Heaven’s Gate, Jeremiah Whitfield passed away.
When Bea sent a note to Montrose informing them, Selena drove into town to offer her help.
“Danielle is taking it as well as can be expected,” Bea whispered in greetin
g. They were sitting with several other neighbors in Whitfield’s small, shabby front room, which doubled as parlor and kitchen. “She looks paler than usual but seems to be holding up.”