The hobbyhorse reappeared, this time with Lottie astride it and Harriet and Allegra trotting after her. Lottie's strong, lithe legs soon propelled the contraption into a fast clip. As she reached the top of the hill, she settled her weight on its frame and went sailing down the drive, shrieking with laughter. Her bonnet flew out behind her, bound only by its velvet ribbons. Frowning, Hayden sat up, unnerved by her fearless flight.
Before he could call out a warning, the hobbyhorse struck a rough stone and went bouncing off the drive and into the grass. Lottie's eyes widened.
As she went hurtling toward a grassy bank, Hayden came to his feet. He was off the stoop and sprinting down the drive before Lottie even hit the clump of earth that sent her flying head over heels through the air.
As he ran, Hayden was nearly blinded by a stark image of Lottie lying utterly still in the grass, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle as the roses faded from her cheeks.
He reached her crumpled form at the same time as Harriet and Allegra. They knelt across from him in a puddle of skirts as he gathered Lottie's warm body into his arms, gripped by icy panic. "Lottie! Lottie! Can you hear me?"
Her eyes slowly fluttered open. She blinked up at him. "Of course I can hear you. You're shouting directly into my ear, aren't you?"
As a teasing smile dimpled the downy curve of her cheek, Hayden was torn between kissing her and shaking her senseless.
Keenly aware of Harriet and Allegra's avid scrutiny, he had to content himself with scolding her. "You careless little fool, what did you think you were doing? You could have broken your bloody neck."
Across from him, Allegra's eyes widened with horrified delight. Realizing it was the first time he'd ever cursed in front of his daughter, Hayden added, "Damn it all."
Lottie wiggled to a sitting position in his arms, but made no attempt to extricate herself from them. "Don't be silly. It's hardly the first tumble I've taken on this thing. You should have seen poor George the week Sterling brought it home from Germany. He took a dive right into a patch of thistles and couldn't sit down for a week."
Hayden hauled her to her feet, still glowering at her. "If I catch you pulling another stunt like that, you won't be able to sit down for a week either."
Harriet and Allegra exchanged a scandalized look.
The hobbyhorse was lying in an ungainly heap a few feet away in the grass. Lottie moved to rescue it.
As she rolled it back toward the drive, Hayden rested his hands on his hips. "Surely you're not going to get back on that contraption after it almost killed you."
"I most certainly am," she retorted. Awicked light dawned in her eyes. "Unless, of course, you'd care to take it for a whirl."
Hayden couldn't let such a challenge pass. "I've got an even better idea."
He marched over to her. She squealed in surprise as he closed his hands around her trim waist and lifted her, setting her sidesaddle on the narrow wooden seat. She clutched at the handlebars to keep her balance. Before she could protest, he threw one long leg over the vehicle's frame, reached around her to close his hands over hers on the handlebars and began to propel the hobbyhorse forward with long, powerful strides. When they reached the top of the next steep incline, he sank down on the seat behind Lottie and stuck his legs straight out before them, sending the vehicle hurtling down the hill at a breakneck pace.
Lottie's terrified squeals quickly became screams of laughter. Harriet and Allegra pelted along behind them for several steps before finally giving up the chase. Then there was only the wind in his hair, the sun in his face, and Lottie's lush, warm body tucked against his.
Hayden had driven his bay across the moor a hundred times since Justine's death, attempting to outpace the shadows of the past. But with Lottie in his arms, he felt as if he wasn't just running away from something, but racing toward something.
Unfortunately, that something proved to be a ditch.
He tugged frantically at the handlebars, but the hobbyhorse continued to shoot straight for the ditch. "Why isn't it steering?" he shouted, fighting to be heard over the rush of the wind.
"Steering?" Lottie shouted back over her shoulder. "What steering?"
Thinking he'd surely misheard her, he tried again. "How do I steer the confounded thing?"
Given the mounting gravity of their situation, Lottie sounded entirely too cheerful as she bellowed back at him, "If its inventor had bothered to equip it with steering, do you think I would have crashed the first time?"
There was no more time to debate the inventor's lack of foresight. The ditch was only a foot away from snagging their front wheel. Wrapping his arms around Lottie's waist, Hayden launched them both off of the hobbyhorse. As they went flying through the air, he curled his body around hers, determined to bear the brunt of their landing.
The next thing Hayden knew, his head was being cradled against something seductively soft and a woman was crooning his name. He opened his eyes a fraction of an inch only to discover that the something soft was Lottie. He was stretched out across her lap, his head cradled against her bosom. It was such a pleasant sensation he rather wished he could stay there all day.
"Oh, Hayden, I feel terrible! If you hadn't been so smug, I would have warned you about the steering. I never meant for you to take such a nasty tumble." She stroked his brow, her fingers tenderly sifting through the vexatious lock of hair that always hung in his eyes. "Can you hear me, you poor dear?"
"Of course I can hear you," he murmured, gazing up at her through his lashes. "You're crooning in my ear, aren't you?"
She stood up abruptly, dumping him unceremoniously to the ground.
"Ow!" Rubbing the back of his head, he sat up and gave her a wounded look. "I'm certainly glad the turf is soft here."
"So am I," she snapped, avoiding his eyes as she brushed tufts of grass from her skirt. "If you'd have broken your neck, the gossips would have blamed me and I would have been known as the 'Murderous Marchioness' for the rest of my life." She sniffed. "Or at least until I found a more affable husband."
As she turned to march away from him, her skirts swishing with indignation, Hayden sprang to his feet and grabbed her by the hand, tugging her around to face him. "Nothing's sacred to you, is it?"
When she realized he was laughing down at her instead of scowling, the wary look in her eyes deepened. "Only the things that deserve to be."
As Hayden reached to gently pluck a blade of grass from her hair, he wondered what might have happened in that moment had they been any other man and woman standing on that sun-drenched hill. If they had met under different circumstances in a different lifetime. If he had been allowed to tenderly woo her before making her his bride.
They might have found out if the mayblossom-scented breeze hadn't carried to their ears the rattle of wooden wheels on cobblestone. Hayden frowned, shading his eyes against the sun's glare as he peered up the hill. A carriage was just turning into the drive, its lacquered shell gleaming like a raven's wing.
Visitors to Oakwylde Manor were hardly a common occurrence. He hadn't extended a single invitation to any of his neighbors since the day Justine had been laid to rest.
The hobbyhorse forgotten, he and Lottie hurried up the hill to join Harriet and Allegra. The carriage was just rattling to a halt in front of the manor. A footman rushed forward to throw open the door and a tiny creature emerged from the vehicle's shadowy interior, dressed from bonnet to boots in stark, unrelenting black.
Clutching at Lottie's arm, Harriet let out a strangled gasp. Lottie paled as if Grim Death itself was descending from the carriage.
"Who is it?" Allegra asked, tugging at Lottie's sleeve. "Is it the undertaker?"
"Worse," Lottie breathed. "It's Terrible Terwilliger herself."
Hayden might have laughed at their exaggerated reaction to what appeared to be a harmless little old lady if her traveling companion hadn't stepped down from the carriage in the next moment, his silvery-blond hair glinting in the sunlight.
As thei
r visitor tucked his elegant walking stick beneath his arm, Allegra squinted toward the carriage. Suddenly a sunny smile broke over her face. "Uncle Ned! Uncle Ned!" she shouted, breaking into a run.
Hayden could only stand and watch as his daughter went racing past him to throw herself into the arms of another man.
Chapter 16
My only hope was to outwit him at his own diabolical game…
SIR EDWARD TOWNSEND SWEPT ALLEGRA UP into his arms, giving her cheek a noisy kiss. "Why, there's my girl! It's been so long I didn't know if you'd even remember your old uncle Ned. Just look at you!" He deposited her back on her feet and chucked her under the chin. "When I saw you last, you were barely out of napkins and now here you are a beautiful young lady! So tell me, how many proposals have you collected from lovestruck young swains?"
While Allegra ducked her head, blushing profusely, Lottie stole a look at Hayden. He was watching the tender exchange, his face utterly devoid of expression.
Handing his walking stick to the footman, the dashing knight offered one arm to Allegra and the other to Miss Terwilliger. As the trio strolled toward them, their progress slowed by Miss Terwilliger's cane, Lottie struggled to tuck her tumbled curls back into their pearl combs. There was nothing she could do about her attire. She'd worn her oldest dress to ride the hobbyhorse, a faded brown muslin more befitting a scullery maid than a marchioness.
Harriet was vainly trying to hide herself behind Lottie. "Do you think my parents sent her? Has she come to fetch me home?"
"Just who in the devil is she?" Hayden asked.
"She was one of our teachers at Mrs. Lyttelton's," Lottie hissed out of the corner of her mouth. "But for the past few years, she's been hiring herself out as a private governess."
"Oh!" he replied dryly. "That Terrible Terwilliger."
Stepping forward, Lottie clasped one of the old woman's black-gloved claws between her hands, smiling through clenched teeth. "Why, Miss Terwilliger, what an astonishing surprise! Whatever brings you to our little corner of the world?"
The woman scowled at Lottie over the top of her wire-rimmed spectacles, the mole on her chin sporting even more hairs than Lottie remembered. "Don't be impertinent, chit. You sent for me."
"I did?" Lottie squeaked.
"You did?" Hayden echoed, slanting Lottie a dark look.
"Of course you did. I might have had to read between the lines of your letter, but you made it abundantly clear that there was a child here in desperate need of my guidance." Miss Terwilliger cast Allegra a withering look, taking in the girl's windblown hair and the bonnet hanging halfway down her back. "And I can see I arrived not a moment too soon."
Allegra sidled out of sight, joining Harriet behind Lottie.
Miss Terwilliger drew Ned forward, fluttering her sparse lashes in a way that might have been construed as coquettish in a woman a hundred years her junior. "I would have been delayed even longer had this charming gentleman here not agreed to escort me."
Hayden appraised Ned with a cool gaze. "I suppose my wife sent for you as well."
Before Lottie could protest, Ned grinned. "Now, why would I need an excuse to visit such a dear old friend?"
"You don't need an excuse," Hayden retorted. "You need an invitation."
Ned sighed. "You always were such a stickler for the proprieties."
Baffled, Lottie glanced between Sir Ned and Miss Terwilliger. "How did the two of you even come to know each other?"
"You have only yourself to blame, my lady," Ned replied, retrieving his walking stick from the footman. "It was at your wedding breakfast that I struck up an acquaintance with your brother George. It didn't take long to discover we shared a number of common interests."
Lottie could hazard a guess as to what those interests might be — most likely riding, gaming, and seducing opera dancers.
"I just happened to be making a call on him at Devonbrooke House when Miss Terwilliger arrived with your letter. After she shared its contents with your family, it was decided that she should journey here to offer you her services as soon as she could extricate herself from her current situation."
Miss Terwilliger tugged off her gloves with a snap that made Lottie flinch. "I shall expect room and board plus an advance on my wages within the week. And I'll tolerate absolutely no flirting from my employers. I'm too old to be chased around the schoolroom by some randy nobleman trying to steal a peek beneath my skirts." She wagged a bony finger in Hayden's face, the hairs on her mole quivering with indignation. "I'll expect a lock on my bedroom door, young man, and you can rest assured that I intend to use it."
Barely managing to conceal his shudder, Hayden sketched her a genteel bow. "You need have no fear for your virtue, madam. I shall strive to comport myself as a gentleman in your presence."
As he straightened, he shot Lottie a look that warned her he was making her no such promise. If he hadn't wanted to murder her before, he most certainly did now.
The gallant Sir Ned came charging to her rescue. "Come, my lady, and tell me how wedded bliss is suiting you." Linking his arm through hers, he drew her toward the house. "Your husband may delight in playing the ogre for those who expect it of him, but I'm sure you've already discovered that a prince's heart beats beneath that stalwart breast of his."
Since Lottie couldn't very well admit that she was beginning to wonder if any heart at all beat beneath her husband's breast, she simply cast Hayden a helpless glance over her shoulder and allowed herself to be drawn into the net of Sir Ned's charm.
* * *
By the time Hayden arrived at supper that night, Ned was regaling them all with stories of his and Hayden's misspent youth at Eton. Hayden sank into his chair only to be forced to spring stiffly back to his feet when it let out an offended squeak. Muttering "infernal creatures" beneath his breath, he swept a black kitten onto the floor.
Since it was the governess's first night at Oakwylde, Lottie had even invited Miss Terwilliger to join them for supper. Wearied by the arduous journey, the old woman was already nodding off in her soup. As Hayden settled himself in his chair, she emitted a snore that could just as easily have been mistaken for a death rattle.
"Don't mind her," Hayden said, accepting a helping of smoked herring from Meggie. "Ned's stories often have that effect on people."
It was impossible for him not to notice that Ned had positioned himself at Lottie's elbow. His wife was looking particularly delectable tonight in a high-waisted silk confection that shimmered like rosewater in the candlelight. Her curls had been swept up to bare the graceful curve of her throat. Hayden found himself wanting to press his lips there, to taste the pulse that beat just below the warm satin of her skin.
As Ned shifted in his chair, positioning himself at the perfect angle to ogle the creamy swell of her breasts, Hayden toyed with his butter knife, his eyes narrowing. Perhaps he had spoken too hastily back in London when he had vowed never to stab his friend in the throat with a jam spoon.
Harriet sat across from their guest, blushing and giggling and making calf's eyes at his every word. Hayden halfway hoped the simpering creature would fall in love with him. It would serve the rascal right to have her dogging his every step like a devoted puppy. Allegra sat next to Harriet, her own gaze equally adoring. Hayden slathered butter on a steaming roll, trying not to remember a time when his daughter had looked at him that way.
"So tell me, Ned," he said, "what time do you hope to be off in the morning? It's a long journey. You might want to get an early start. Perhaps you should have your valet awaken you before dawn."
"Hayden!" Lottie exclaimed, plainly appalled by his rudeness. "Why wait until morning? Why don't you just hand him his hat and escort him to the door right now?"
Hayden widened his eyes innocently. "Shall I ring for Giles?"
Ned laughed aloud. "There's no need to scold, my lady. I learned long ago not to take offense at your husband's boorish behavior. Actually, Hayden, I don't have to be back in London for a week. I thought I
might linger on as your guest and take advantage of the opportunity to get to know your charming bride." He captured Lottie's hand and brought it to his lips, a devilish glint in his eye. "I'm hoping that in time she'll come to look upon me as something of a brother."
"She already has a brother," Hayden said flatly. "And a husband." Rising, he tossed his napkin to the table. "If you'll excuse us, ladies, Sir Ned and I are going to retire to the library for port and cigars."
"But the second course hasn't even been served," Lottie protested.
Ned also rose and tossed down his napkin, accepting Hayden's unspoken challenge. "Have no fear, dear ladies. We shall return in time to join you for dessert. As Hayden can tell you, I never could resist anything sweet."
He winked at Harriet, causing her to titter into her napkin. Then, sketching them all a gallant bow, he followed Hayden from the dining room.
* * *
Hayden stalked ahead of Ned, his long strides making short work of the crimson and blue runner that lined the corridor. He didn't utter a single word, not until they were both settled in the library, a glass of port in one hand and a lit cheroot in the other.
"You're playing a dangerous game, my friend," Hayden warned, leaning against the mantel.
"On the contrary." Ned sank into a leather chair and propped his gleaming boots on an ottoman. "As I see it, you're the one who's courting danger by neglecting your lovely young bride."
"What makes you think Lottie's neglected?" Hayden asked, frowning.
Ned took a puff on the cheroot. "Your rather unconventional sleeping arrangements, for one thing."
Hayden narrowed his eyes. "You've only been here for a few hours. Which maid did you seduce to obtain that juicy tidbit of gossip?"
Ned gave him a reproachful look. "You underestimate my charms. It took no more than a smile and a wink to coax that charming little red-haired baggage into spilling all of her secrets. It seems that you and the marchioness's marital relations, or lack thereof, have been an endless source of speculation in the servants' quarters."
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