After tucking her book safely among his things, he laced his fingers to form a step and hoisted her into the saddle. One hand gripped his shoulder and was quickly gone. To his relief—certainly not to his disappointment—she hooked her right knee around the pommel rather than throwing that leg over Lady Jane’s back. He saw no more than one muddy ankle boot before her skirts swept into place and fully hid both legs from view once more.
She took up the reins just as he gripped them beneath Lady Jane’s chin, at the base of the bridle. The horse tossed her head to express her displeasure at their tug-of-war.
“It seems she knows who’s really in charge,” Erica said.
Did her voice always carry that mischievous note? Tristan leveled a look over his shoulder, one that had quelled more than a few impudent junior officers.
It had no visible effect on her, however.
“I am in charge, Miss Burke,” he said then. “Make no mistake about that.” After nearly ten years as an officer, command came naturally to him. “Now, the reins, if you please—or frankly, even if you don’t please. Because I don’t fancy waiting about for those clouds.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the steadily darkening western sky.
Whether it was his words or the weather that persuaded her, he could not be certain. But with a toss of her own head, she surrendered the reins and contented herself with two fistfuls of Lady Jane’s mane.
Well, she didn’t lack spirit, he’d give her that. He had always valued spirit and enthusiasm in the men he had commanded. Perhaps Miss Burke’s unconventional streak would prove to be an asset.
One must always have hope.
The ground was slick, spongy in some places and rocky in others. The ridge of higher ground that ran between the cottage and Hawesdale Chase appeared unbroken from a distance. In reality, however, it was made up of many small hillocks and an equal number of little valleys. Both his boots and Lady Jane’s hooves fought for purchase. Every step was a gamble.
On one particularly sharp descent, the horse locked her forelegs and refused to take another step. With a firm grip on the reins, he stepped ahead to show her it was safe. “Forward, Lady Jane.” The mare gave no sign of having heard.
Erica shifted slightly in the saddle, leaned over Lady Jane’s neck, and whispered in her ears, which twitched forward and back as she took in the words. Then, to Tristan’s amazement, the horse took three wary steps down the embankment and followed him through a newly formed stream and up the next hill.
“What did you say to her?” he asked when they were safely on higher ground.
“A lady never tells, Mr. Laurens.”
“I thought you weren’t a lady, Miss Burke,” he teased.
Her spine stiffened. “I was referring to the horse.”
Forcing a laugh, he took one stride forward. Somehow, however, his boot never met the ground. Instead, his other leg slid from beneath him and he found himself on his arse in the mud, skidding down the slope. Miss Burke, damn her, had the foresight to twitch the reins from his grasp so that Lady Jane did not come tumbling down after like some awful parody of a child’s nursery rhyme. And to add insult to injury—for the slope was dotted with sharp rocks—when he splashed to a halt in the ditch at the bottom, his hat fell off and was swept away on the water.
“Mr. Laurens!” There was laughter in her voice, he felt sure of it. “Are you harmed?”
“Don’t—”
—dismount.
But the order had not left his lips in time. She was already on the ground. Her boots soon found the same slick spot, and faster than he could shout or she could scream, she had slid and tumbled her way down and nearly landed in his lap.
Alas, some part of him whispered devilishly, not nearly enough.
Such wayward thoughts ought to have scattered when she began to laugh. That outlandish sound ought not to have made her more attractive yet. A proper lady, at least those among his acquaintance, would have been either frightened or mortified by their predicament.
For her part, Lady Jane gave a snort and began to amble away. He watched the horse go. “What’s that phrase of yours, Miss Burke?”
A frown of incomprehension notched her brow. “Do you mean A Thiarna Dia?” Her freckles stood out dark against the sudden rush of pink that streaked across her cheeks. “But it’s…well, it’s blasphemous, you know.”
As he hoisted himself to his feet, he felt cold mud slither beneath his clothes and settle into every crack and crevice. “Not blasphemous enough.”
Though he held out a hand to help her rise, she sprang up unaided, unfazed by the fall. With a flick of one wrist, she shook out her skirts, spattering his ruined boots with more mud. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think before I—” Her expression turned rueful. “My sister would say I never do.”
For a moment, the smile slipped from her face and she stared past his shoulder. Not with longing, as one does when imagining a place of respite at the end of a journey. But steeling herself against reproach, as if she had been chastised often and expected to be again.
He was a soldier. He’d had intimate acquaintance with dirt. And cold. And aches in places well-bred people did not mention. “What possible difference could a little more mud make, Miss Burke?” he said, trying to reassure her. Never mind that this was not the appearance he had planned to make at his homecoming.
“Well, the rain will likely wash some of it off,” she said, dispelling her momentary despair with a shrug, tipping her face toward the sky. The morning sun had given way to first to clouds, then to heavy mist, which had shifted over the last quarter hour to a steady drizzle. When she met his gaze once more, she had tacked her usual stubborn expression back in place.
Now, however, he could guess that something else hid just beneath the surface. Something softer and less sure. Experimentally, he held out an arm, expecting her once more to refuse his help. But after a moment’s hesitation, she threaded her hand lightly around his elbow.
When they reached Lady Jane, she caught the reins in her other hand and kept walking. Before he could offer to help her back into the saddle, she said, “It’s better this way, don’t you think?”
“Safer, yes.” No sense in risking another fall, for either horse or rider.
Walking arm in arm was not without risk, however. Though the pressure of her hand was slight, he could feel himself being drawn ever so slightly off his usual course nevertheless. He had always been the straight arrow, the plumb line. But from the moment this woman had been blown into his life, she’d been tugging him off-balance.
Determined to regain his center, he squared his shoulders and lengthened his stride. He was an army officer. For God’s sake, he was a duke! Neither wind, nor rain, nor a copper-haired sprite would stay him from his duty.
“Miss Burke, I think it’s time I explained—”
“Please tell me that’s Hawesdale Chase.” Though they spoke at the same time, he heard the weariness in her voice.
Below them, nestled in a grove of poplars, stood a red brick house with tall, narrow windows and a chimney at either end, from which ribbons of smoke unfurled like the faintest traces of pencil sketched against a slate sky. A respectable manor by almost any standard, and compared to the cottage in which they had sheltered, a mansion.
He drew a deep breath. It was not that he hesitated to speak the truth, but rather that the truth was complicated. “In the time of the Tudor kings, that was Hawesdale Chase, yes. Intended as an autumnal retreat. A hunting lodge, as the name implies. But when the estate passed from that family, another house was built and claimed the name.”
“Your house. Is it near?”
“Not quite half a mile away. This one now serves as its gatehouse.”
“Gatehouse?” She tipped her gaze upward but did not meet his eyes. “Then Hawesdale Chase must be quite large…”
“See for yourse
lf.”
He directed her attention past the gatehouse to the denser woodland behind it, divided from them by what was, on any ordinary day, a picturesque winding stream. The ground was thick with freshly fallen foliage. Only a few leaves now remained to filter the view. Above the bare branches, the rolling landscape rose to grander heights, not quite mountains. Nestled at the foot of those rugged hills stood a sprawling mansion, the fever dream of some Jacobean architect whose love of pierced work, scrolls, and other ornamentation had known no bounds. The most charitable compliment Tristan had ever been able to pay the house was that it was almost symmetrical.
Still, wreathed in mist and shadow, it was a striking sight, and Miss Burke seemed to be forcibly struck by it.
“I—I don’t… Are you—?” She looked from Hawesdale to him and back again, nostrils flaring. “Are you the…the steward or…or the housekeeper’s son, or—?”
“I’m afraid not, Miss Burke.” The wry smile that curved his lips was only partly in response to her reaction.
Mostly, he was remembering the day he had overheard Cook telling one of the new kitchen maids what seemed to be common knowledge among the staff: “Her Grace, God rest ’er, were that desperate to give His Grace another son. A spare, so to speak. When the years rolled by with no babe in sight, folks did say she took comfort in the arms of another man…” At those words Cook’s smoke-roughened voice had dropped to a whisper, and Tristan had had to hold his breath to hear the rest. “’Tis not for me to say, o’ course. But there’s little enough of the old duke in Lord Tris, to be sure. An’ the head gardener did leave his post thereafter…”
Whether the rumor that the late duchess had consorted with the gardener was true, and whether the second son of the Duke of Raynham in fact belonged to another man, only his mother could have told him for certain, and she had died too soon after his birth to tell him anything. His brother Percy, eleven years his senior, had been unapproachable on matters of far less import; Tristan could never bring to himself to ask about sordid gossip.
After that day, he had taken the only prudent course. He had walled up every weakness he imagined inimical to the son of a duke. He had refused to indulge in behaviors that might invite speculation. And he had followed rules, rather than breaking them, as boys—and men, and even, it seemed, some women—were wont to do.
Ultimately, he had consoled himself with the knowledge that, if the story had been true, the man who called himself his father surely would have disowned him, or at least betrayed his disdain in some word or deed. Instead, he’d willingly granted Tristan’s request to purchase him an officer’s commission. He and Tristan were alike in neither appearance nor temperament, it was true. But really, what did it matter? Tristan was not next in line for the dukedom.
Until he was.
“That is your house?” Erica demanded, bringing him back to the present moment. “And I suppose all this”—she gestured feebly with her free hand toward the woods and the hills—“is also…yours?”
“Yes. Every step we’ve taken today has been on my land.”
Her hand slid from his sleeve. “You mean…the cottage—?”
“Once housed the estate’s head gardener.”
“Then you are—you’re a—”
“A duke.” He felt strangely as if he ought to bow when he said it, as one did when making a proper introduction. And he might have, if not for the mud and the rain and the fact that they had already spent a night in one another’s company. “Raynham, for my sins.”
If her hands had not already been white with cold, her fierce grip on Lady Jane’s reins would have stripped the color from her knuckles. “You misunderstand me, Your Grace.” Her amber eyes swept boldly over him. “I was going to say, you are a coward.”
Chapter 3
And a liar, Erica wanted to add, but a rare flash of self-preservation kept her tongue in her mouth. Tristan Laurens, indeed! Although…
At the wedding ceremony joining her sister to the Marquess of Ashborough, she’d learned one thing. Noblemen were saddled with a long string of names that were almost never used, not even in the family. Vaguely, she’d wondered whether such a man might even forget a few of them. Perhaps the Duke of—what was it he’d said? Ah, yes. Raynham—had a similar litany that included the name Tristan. Tristan, whose father had been fond of the stories of King Arthur and his knights…
What rubbish!
Over the plodding steps of the mare, who followed her dutifully though the reins had fallen slack in Erica’s hand, she heard the splash-stomp of a man’s booted tread. “A coward, did you say? Explain yourself, Miss Burke.”
Did he ever ask? Plead, cajole, beg? She would hear him barking out orders in her sleep tonight.
“And if I won’t, Your Grace? Ah, but I forgot. Your sort considers it a matter of pride to answer an insult. Or is it a matter of honor? Oh, dear. Will you challenge me to a duel, then?” She whirled on him so fast she nearly lost her footing in the mud. “Before you speak, you ought to know my younger brother taught me to shoot, and I almost never miss.”
She tried to convince herself he didn’t look like a duke, standing there covered head to toe in mud, overlong hair plastered to his brow and neck, rain tracing glittering tracks through the scruff of his beard. Yet even through the dirt, his bearing radiated power, authority, control. As did his eyes, which at this distance were black and hard as mica chips. “You almost never…” he repeated, incredulous. “Stop spouting nonsense, Miss Burke. If you can.”
As he spoke he continued to stride toward her, and on the last three words he stopped just inches away. Perhaps his eyes really were black. At the moment, not even a sliver of color rimmed his flared pupils. His breath formed little puffs of steam in the chilled air, putting her strongly in mind of a cartoon sketch of a raging bull.
The fingertips of her free hand drove into his breastbone. “Only a coward would have kept his true identity a secret. Did you imagine if I had known who you were, I would have used last night’s unfortunate circumstance to my benefit? Let’s see…a young woman, stranded overnight with an eligible gentleman…ought I to expect an offer of marriage?” At that, his jaw actually fell open. “Silly me, I thought only to shelter from the storm. And for that matter,” she went on, lifting her fingers for the satisfaction of thrusting them forward again with the next point, “why on earth were you there to begin with? You might have reached your home easily before the heaviest rain began to fall. Only a coward would have chosen that tumble-down shack over the risk of getting wet.”
“Have a care, Miss Burke.” In a flash, his hand came up and pinned hers flat to his chest. A wall of muscle and bone leaped to life under her touch. Were pampered, privileged noblemen usually so wonderfully…hard? “I am—”
But whatever he was remained unspoken. Lady Jane stamped and snorted, heralding the arrival of another set of footsteps.
“Raynham? Is that you?” The man spoke with a strong Scottish accent that carried through the rain as he trudged up the hill from the direction of the gatehouse. He was neatly dressed, bespectacled, and carrying an umbrella.
“Mr. Davies.” The duke dropped his hold on her hand and leaned forward to extend his in greeting. “What brings you out in this weather?”
The man stopped a few feet from them and bowed his head crisply; he made no attempt to shake hands. After holding his own position a moment too long, the duke jerked himself upright, as if a fishhook had caught him in the spine. “Her Grace asked me to keep a lookout,” Mr. Davies said. He looked to be her father’s age, or thereabouts. His clothes, his complexion, everything about him bespoke the sort of person who performed his most important work behind a desk. And everything about his current demeanor suggested he toiled behind that desk at the behest of the man standing before him. Even the rain seemed to make him nervous. He fumbled with his umbrella as if weighing whether or not he should surrender it to
the duke.
For a moment, silence fell among them. Mr. Davies glanced at her once out of the corner of his eye but gave no other indication of noting her presence. He seemed to be waiting for the duke to decide whether she merited an introduction.
She dipped into a curtsy, a shallow one. Anything deeper might send her toppling once more into the mud. “I’m Miss Burke,” she said, mustering all the dignity she could.
“Oh, er, pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Burke,” the gentleman stammered and bowed again. “Walter Davies. Raynham’s man of business.” His gaze flicked over her once before lighting somewhere in the vicinity of the duke’s chin.
“I found Miss Burke sheltering in the gardener’s cottage. An unhappy accident separated her from her family, with whom she was traveling to Windermere.”
“’Tis fortunate you rescued her, sir.”
Tristan—she would not go on thinking of him as “the duke”—accepted Mr. Davies’s praise with a stiff nod.
As neither of them showed any sign of consulting her opinion on the matter of the supposed “rescue,” she cleared her throat, drawing both sets of eyes her way. “I wish to be reunited with my sister,” she said. “At the very least, I must get word to her, to let her know where I am.”
“But the rain and the flooding have likely made that impossible,” Tristan interjected smoothly. “I fear the best we can do at the moment is to send a messenger to Endmoor to leave word for her family when they are able to return there.”
Mr. Davies nodded his agreement. “Of course, Your Grace. I’ll see to it that a lookout is kept in the village for…for the Burke family, is it?”
Tristan looked at her expectantly.
“Yes—er, no.” For a moment, she had forgotten her sister’s newly acquired title. “My sister is Lady Ashborough.”
“Lady Ashborough?” Mr. Davies exclaimed. “The authoress?”
Erica nodded. “The same, sir.”
Tristan looked from one to the other in open incredulity, but Mr. Davies did not seem to notice. “Oh, The Wild Irish Rose is delightful. I’m no’ sure I can bear it until the next installment is released.” In his excitement, t’s began to drop from his otherwise proper speech. “I dinna suppose you know…?”
The Duke's Suspicion Page 3