“Perhaps you might think to take lessons?” Lady Havenshire grinned.
“I’m beginning to see just why your father feels you utterly unmarriageable, m’lady,” Lawrence teased. Old Burnie stepped to a stop in the middle of the field and rather unceremoniously plopped onto the mud, laying down with a yawn, leaving the duke’s boots scuffed, splashes of muddied water across his pant legs. Anne laughed, petting her hand along Midnight’s bridle.
“Is that so? Do you think me utterly unmarriageable, then, m’lord? Must a woman stand before you in fear of sundering her beauty, pleading with you to teach her the ways of the beasts of wild, before you find her agreeable to a marriage, m’lord?” Anne’s voice grew thick with derisive sarcasm as she trotted closer, her circle around the lazy, aged steed and its muddied rider narrowing. The duke pulled himself from the lazy animal’s back, dusting away the dirt and the leaves clung to his jacket from the slow trip through the autumn forest, exhaling deeply. She could see the humble smile forming on the charming gentleman’s lips and she bit her own, her cheeks reddening as she teased him. He liked it, she thought… and so did she.
“For me, a woman’s skill upon the back of a steed means comparatively little, though perhaps I should temper my expectations when it comes said skilled rider’s coy wit,” the duke chided her in a deadpan, joking manner; she feigned offense.
“Have you now taken up with the likes of the Earl of Carteret in your philosophies of the woman, then? Perhaps we next shall see you with your hand upon the thighs of every able-bodied young woman in all of England,” she joked. “Then you could take my hand in marriage, with the riding crop in the other to keep me in line.”
“And what, pray tell, have you gotten into your head, m’lady, to convince you I have any interest in taking your hand, then?” the duke retorted amiably. Anne’s cheeks erupted in a blush.
“Call it a certain intuition, or perhaps the fact that you keep arriving on my doorstep,” Anne stated cheekily, before the memory of Lawrence’s sister again cast clouds across their exchange. She tried to brighten the mood, offering the duke a hand to hoist him up out of the mud. He regarded her suspiciously, and instead squished his way free of the mire, dusting off his boots with a hmph.
“Trees are… a fair bit sparser, on my land, and there are certainly fewer forests to be found,” Lawrence mentioned, glancing at the thick tree line they had both precariously trotted their way through.
“My estate has long had some of the finest forests and hunting grounds in all of England,” Anne chimed proudly. “Father had little interest in attracting hunters, and tore down many of the cabins and hunting lodges my grandfather and his fathers had used to draw renters and trappers out this way. I always appreciated the forests more for days like today… when the autumn comes, and the colors sweep across the leaves, and the breezes kick them around… as a child, I also enjoyed the trees for climbing, and playing,” she recalled with an evil little grin. “Poor mother, she’d go searching the moors, always winding up ruining one of her finest dresses, trudging through the mud and the branches looking for me.”
“You would have gotten along rather terrifically with my sister, then,” Lord Strauss laughed. He tried various calls and cries and snorts and sounds to lure Pierre out of the muddy morass he’d decided to lay in, but the stubborn old horse had little interest in the man or his antics.
“Did she too enjoy leading your mother wildly about the estate?” Anne chuckled, leading Midnight into the muddy field and with a few deft motions and noises, she’d managed to coax Burnie, whinnying, to his hooves. She beamed at the duke, who shrugged in defeat.
“I tried,” he said with a frown. “I suppose you’re quite right. I’m not much a gentleman, am I?”
“Are you perhaps throwing out a line in hopes of finding a compliment on the other end? That’s certainly a pitiable thing for a gentleman to do,” the lady chided.
“Considering my current predicament, I think I’ve made myself look quite pitiable already,” he quipped back, looking down at the mud now staining his breeches.
“Pitiable? Perhaps, though poor Burnie’s the one who laid down in the stuff,” Anne snickered. “You didn’t answer me… about your sister,” Anne’s voice fell to a curious murmur; the duke sighed, glancing away, and Anne’s own expression grew worrisome. “I hope I don’t… conjure, poor thoughts, with such a subject.”
“Thoughts of her are rarely poor, m’lady, as she’s one of the most capable and amazing people I’ve met - woman or man,” Lawrence said resoundingly. “I have… a lot to make up for, in life, for the way she was… treated.”
“I regret mentioning the problem, m’lord, but…” her breath caught in her throat as a soft rumble whizzed through the air. The horses whinnied, and darkness began to creep over the sky. Suddenly a loud thunderclap shattered their moment together; startled, the two nobles looked to the sky, only noticing all too late that a thunderstorm had darkened the moors and forests of the Roxborough estate. Anne hastily glanced across the fields - they had spent all morning riding, into the afternoon, and had ranged too far for the two of them to make it back safe to the manor in time.
“The storm doesn’t seem interested in waiting for us to complete this particular conversation,” Lawrence said, his voice once again strong, alluring; and now, full of duty, as he searched for a resolution to their particular situation. A slow panic set into Anne’s mind; she hadn’t realized just how far they had ranged, nor had she been paying attention to the weather, and she quietly cursed herself.
“I’m… sorry, I’m not certain that this old beast can make it terribly far in heavy rains,” she said, voice warbling as she led Old Burnie with a grasp on his reins. Lord Strauss comforted Anne’s fear, stroking her tied-back tail of flowing hair as he quickly thought on a decision; another thunderclap echoed overhead.
“Your father mentioned a cabin - a place he said you often enjoyed retreating to,” the lord recalled.
“Y-yes!” Nadia exclaimed. “If we can make—” a loud crash of thunder, a flash of lightning, and a light, dewy misting of rain fell down upon them all at once, and with each movement intent, Lawrence grasped Burnie’s bridle; the horse whinnied, and he set Anne upon her steed with great, effusive strength.
“We must be hasty, ride ahead of the storm as best we can,” he insisted. Anne blinked at the sudden strength shown by the man, but she had little time to contemplate now, driving Shadow back into the darkness of the forest as the lightning and thunder nipped at the horse’s hooves.
Chapter Nine
“Cold! C… c-cold,” rang a shrill squeak of a voice through the cabin as the door swung open, gushing and rolling rain pattering hard across its rooftop. The shuddering, shivering woman, clad in a cool and breezy autumn dress of white and blue, struggled to take stilted strides across the wooden footboards, which creaked with age beneath each gentle and measured step she took. Her teeth chattering, she tried to put together another few words to explain just how much like hell she felt in that particular moment, but instead all that came out was a series of half-formed vowels and lip-shaking sibilants.
“Of course you’re cold, that shower was not particularly warm, m’lady,” the duke announced with a confident smile as he placed his hands strong upon her shoulders, leading her gently across the quaint cottage. Spartan in its accoutrements, it certainly didn’t seem particularly fitting for a hovel placed upon the wealth Roxborough estate - a dust-covered, single-colored rug ran along the floor, leading to a sitting area sparsely populated with crudely-carved wooden furniture and one single sofa, set before the fireplace. Anne recalled the nights she had spent set fireside in the waning moments of each day - she spent much of her youth secreting away here, to read the books left by the cabin’s previous owners, a pair of hunters who had worked for her father, in the days before she’d been born. A dozen or so such cottages dotted the estate, but none housed the library that this did. Two beds set in each corner, flanking the fire
place, the far wall of the small hovel housed books - books, books and only books, vast shelves full of them, shelves set upon more shelves to house more volumes. She had read grand adventures and tales of excitement; histories of war and tales of the purest love.
And it was those she always secretly treasured. For even with her slighting statements and sense of disdain for the manner in which society functioned, even she longed for a true love - a pure love, a heart to come and rescue her and to understand her and to appreciate her for precisely who she was. Not a man who wanted to transform her into desirability - but a man who saw her desirability. Alas, she had begun to fear those sorts of loves existed only in storybooks and not upon the cold hills and scattered, opulent estates of England.
The duke led Anne to the couch near the fire; her shoulders shook as she felt the chill run down her spine and grip her intensely. She tried to still the jitter of her teeth but she could not; her reflexes worked against her, trying to generate some sense of energy and warmth to keep her cooled heart beating.
“I’m c… cold, Lawrence,” she managed to put a sentence together, as her companion moved with a sense of urgency and duty; he moved quickly, to the fireplace, opening the flue with a tug on a metal bar. He looked back at her, and she could see caring determination in his eyes, and in the rugged smile smoldering beneath his deep gray eyes.
“I’ll have that fixed quite quickly, m’lady,” he insisted, searching along the front wall for the tools needed to light the fireplace. She watched him through her cold-glazed eyes, her breathing heavier as she felt the rain-drenched dress stick tightly to her skin.
“You’re… q-q-quite ha… handy,” she commented, watching him as he grasped at the pile of wood near the fireplace. Having found no usable flint and tinder he began to press the wood together, carving away an exposed area from the bark to try to pull a spark from the logs.
“I had a talented teacher in the means of survival, m’lady,” he replied.
“Y-you mean your sister?” Anne warbled.
“She taught me quite a lot,” he confirmed with a nod. “We’d start campfires, scrounge together whatever we could, build a shelter of out sticks and live like savages upon the estate land when we were children,” he mused. “I’ve not a taste for riding horses because sister and I spent most of our time ranging like steeds, ourselves,” he chuckled as he tried with muffled condemnations to light a spark on the lumber.
“I wish I h… h-had had a chance to meet her,” Anne chattered out, the rain running in rivulets down her back, dripping from her soaked strands of hair. “Sh-she se-seems like…”
“Blast it!” the duke exclaimed. “The wood, it’s soaked through, waterlogged,” he declared, his expression wincing in the sting of failure. “I’m… damn it all,” he growled, before he began to scan the cabin for another solution. Anne watched him closely, or at least as closely as her shaking body could.
“I-I’m sure I’ll be f-fine,” she quaked. “I’m—”
“M’lady, you’re soaked through and freezing,” he insisted. “You need some manner of warmth. Here,” he looked along the walls to the books. “Paper, bindings - another potent source of fuel for the fire. I can just—”
“What? No!” Anne exclaimed as he moved to the shelves and grasped the first tome that he could - a thick volume bound in red leather, flowery figures of gold filigreed onto its spine. “You can’t commit such base vandalism,” she exclaimed.
“M’lady, I’ve no interest in seeing you shake and chatter yourself to the grave, and I doubt your father would be all too pleased with me should I let that happen,” Lawrence laughed. “These books have been here for how long? Have you not already read each of them thoroughly?” he asked with a churlish smile.
“It’s not… y-yes, I’ve read a great many of them,” she said sheepishly. “That’s… that’s scarcely the point, though, Lawrence. These books, they represent knowledge, they represent… art, beauty, there’s poetry, and even some of Shakespeare’s works here, and—”
“Then we’ll simply choose a poor book to fuel the fire, hmm?” he said with a chuckle, pulling the red tome from the shelf. Anne, recognizing the volume, blushed profusely, her cheeks burning. Quite ironically the embarrassment had warmed her prickling skin against the chill, though she did not know whether freezing or her precarious emotional position was worse. “This one… I’ve not heard of this author, but the title is quite… curious,” Lawrence observed. “Torn Across the Stars… have you read this one, m’lady?”
“I’ve… I, I’ve read— I’ve read a part of it, yes if I do recall correctly,” she said. “I don’t rem… member,” she chattered out tensely.
“Perhaps a few sentences will refresh your memory then,” Lawrence said nonchalantly, flipping the tome’s red-bound face open to its first page.
“N-no! I-I mean, no, that’s— that’s wholly unnecessary, m’lord, I think you… y-yes, that book, dreadful, perhaps you c-could use it for the fire,” she stammered. Nerves and chill combined were quite terrible for one’s speech. Anne could tell that, having been at the rough end of the woman’s teasing on his equestrian skills all afternoon, that now Lawrence smirked at an opportunity to find something quite as equivalently embarrassing for her to deal with, and her stomach knotted with dread.
“And I thought you averse to the very idea of burning any of these books, m’lady?” he joked. She gulped hard.
“N-not that one, it’s dreadful!” she exclaimed nervously.
“I thought you didn’t quite remember this one?” he chided her. “Let’s read an excerpt, just to make sure,” he smiled, flipping about halfway through the book. “Ah, here, this seems as good a passage as any.”
“You needn’t go to such trouble, m’lord,” she insisted, her voice quivering more in anxiety now than from the freeze setting into her blood.
“I insist!” he exclaimed broadly, running his eyes along the page. “Let us see, here. ‘He laid upon her lips a cottony caress, with his…’” Lawrence began to read the excerpt, before stopping cold and clearing his throat loudly. His eyes widened and Anne’s blush burned harder; she looked away, biting her bottom lip as tremoring embarrassment blossomed in every corner of her body. He looked over to her with a brow lofted. “This book was quite dreadful, you say?” he asked. “You read it?”
“I’m… I d… I didn’t read the… the whole th… thing,” she murmured, shuddering. “I’m… th-that is to say, y…”
“You read this, m’lady?” he asked again plainly. Anne gulped, squirming on the couch.
“I thi… think, I may have.”
“Here’s a few more sentences, to refresh your memory,” he added.
“N-no!”
“It says here, ‘he ran his fingers along her skin, and like the blast of lightning in a churning thunderstorm, she felt life burn vibrant into her every vein’,” he announces, clearing his throat and continuing, much to the lady’s embarrassment. “’There’s no need for worry, said the stalwart gentleman, his eyes piercing and his touch vibrant, as his fingers slipped against her thi—’”
“Pl-please,” she shuddered, swallowing hard.
“Is this the sort of reading you quite enjoy, m’lady?” he asked.
“I’m… I read a wide variety of books… histories, novels,” she chattered. “I thought you had wanted to start a fire? I’m still quite cold.”
“’He announced to her his undying need, with fevered and molten whispers upon her ear,’ the duke continued. His voice slowed as he came upon something quite improperly steamy. ‘Skilled fingers worked at her skin and at the warmth between her, making her feel alive…’”
“M’lord! Such things a-are quite… inappropriate, to speak aloud, in the company of a woman of my station, don’t you think?” Anne resorted to the last thing she felt she could appeal to, that conventional sense of social expectation that she would otherwise so despise. She hoped it would work in her favor this time.
“M’lady,
it’s just the words printed in the book,” he added coyly. She blushed. “You said you didn’t enjoy this book?” he drew closer to her. “You didn’t want it to be burned?”
“I… I just… I value all books, is all,” she said, looking away.
“But this book…” his voice grew deeper, that baritone rumbling in his throat.
“Fairy tales written by bored women with wild imaginations,” Anne spat dismissively. “I’ve no use… for…”
“’And he embraced her, but not only in body, but in soul,’” the lord continued reading from the passage as he stepped closer to her. “’He knew her, and she knew him, and they knew one another like none had ever known anyone in the whole existence of the world. For when they embraced, the sun grew jealous, for it knew it would never once in all its endless years of burning know the heat with which their passions for one another burned.’”
“Em… embarrassing,” Anne said, though she felt herself surrendering to the sweet words murmured from the lord’s lips. “Ab… absurd. Such things don’t… exist, such feelings don’t…”
“Art is reflectively of the people who create it, don’t you think, m’lady?” the husky baritone imparted. “That passion… that sense of love, of true devotion to one another…”
“Just silly dr… dreams,” she resisted weakly. “Silly… girl’s dreams…” He came closer, until their lips had nearly met; he sat beside her, the book in his hand, open to that passionate passage. Though her cheeks burned in anxiety and in want, and he drew so close, she couldn’t find anything to say.
“I’m… c-cold,” she blurted weakly. He rose to his feet without another word, and next she knew his heavy coat had fallen from his shoulders; he placed it on the couch next to her, and Anne’s eyes grew wide. She had known the duke to be quite handsome; she had appreciated his piercing gaze, the masculine cut of his jaw, the dark and handsome mystery that whirled around his enticing visage. But she had not seen this part of him; his shirt, soaked by rain, clung tight to his flesh; beneath the damp cloth she could see a body crisscrossed with the chisel of finely-knotted muscle, born no doubt from youthful years of climbing and exploring in happy mirth with his sister. So taken was she by the unexpected sight that her breath nearly got away from her; she gasped softly, her eyes wide and attentive even as the chill numbed her sense of touch.
Desiring The Duke (Regency Romance: Strong Women Find True Love Book 4) Page 7