This was becoming decidedly less amusing. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
The front doors burst open, and his students hurried down the steps, Miss Perchase trailing behind and looking as though she was about to have an apoplexy. The girls all looked so…pristine as they gathered at the back of the vehicle: prim bonnets and matching pelisses and shawls, three of them carrying quaint little parasols. Grey scowled. What in damnation was he doing, instructing virginal, infant chits how to catch husbands?
“What took you so long?” he grumbled.
“Miss Emma says we must always be properly attired,” the senior girl, Lady Jane something, said brightly. “We had to fetch our bonnets.”
“Splendid. Let’s get going then, shall we?”
They remained by the tail of the vehicle, looking at him expectantly. Finally his little guard sighed. “You’re supposed to help us up,” she said.
Stifling a curse beneath a smile, Grey stalked around the back of the vehicle and one by one offered them his hand as they stepped up over the low lip of the tail. The groom stood holding the dilapidated horse and grinning gap-toothed at him.
Once the chits and their chaperone were settled, he climbed onto the low seat and took the ribbons. “We’ll be back in time for luncheon,” he announced.
The groom stepped back from the cart. “Mind the turns,” he said. “Old Joe can get a bit cantankerous.”
As Grey was a member of the four-horse club, driving a cart and pony was about as challenging as sitting on a tree stump. He clucked at Old Joe and started the cart rolling toward the front gate. “Go let us out, why don’t you?”
Tobias did so, and as they started up the rutted lane toward Haverly, a small hand touched Grey’s shoulder. “Where are we going, Your Grace?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Is it far?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced over his shoulder at a pair of serious brown eyes. “Why?”
“Mary doesn’t travel very well. Miss Emma usually has her sit up front.”
Grey returned his gaze to the road. “Do you want to sit up here with me, Miss Mawgry?”
“No, Your Grace,” the quiet voice answered. “I’ll be fine.”
“She’s fine,” he said, for the little chaperone’s benefit. For all the chaperoning Miss Perchase was doing, she might as well have been dead in the back of the wagon.
Elizabeth leaned up against his back, little hands on both of his shoulders. “She’s going to be ill,” she whispered in his ear.
This was absolutely going to kill him—and Emma Grenville knew it, no doubt. In fact, giving him an apoplexy had probably been her plan all along. He couldn’t make her pay the rent if he was dead.
He pulled Old Joe to a stop. “Miss Mawgry, why don’t you join me?” he asked, turning around in the seat.
Miss Perchase put a hand to her chest. “Your Gr—”
“It’s the driver’s seat, not Gretna Green,” he said shortly. “Miss Mawgry?”
The brunette did look a little gray-cheeked as she rose. “I’m very sorry, Your Grace,” she muttered. “I just need to face forward.”
If Elizabeth hadn’t spoken, the chit would have cast up her accounts without uttering a word of protest. “I prefer the wind in my face, myself,” he said, relenting a little. He stood and helped her onto the driver’s perch beside him. “Speak up, next time.”
“Miss Emma says men don’t like to hear complaints.”
He wondered where Miss Emma had learned that bit of information. “Neither do men like persons vomiting in their carriages.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
They clattered down the road again. “Better?” he asked.
“Yes, Your Grace. Thank you.”
The relative silence lasted for two minutes, while Grey tried to decide where Tristan might have escorted Emma. Probably the nearest cattle pasture—Haverly had at least two dozen new calves this spring, and females adored babies of any species.
“Your Grace,” the little annoyance behind him piped up again, “are you rich?”
“That’s one question a lady is never supposed to ask a gentleman.”
“Oh. But how is anyone supposed to find out anything, then?”
“Observation and subtle inquiry.” This teaching business might not be so godawful, after all.
“May we observe, then?”
“Please do.” If it kept them quiet while he scouted for Emma and Tristan, all the better.
A few moments of furious whispering erupted behind him and then stopped. The estate road appeared on their left, curving around the Academy’s duck pond, and Grey coaxed Old Joe into a wide turn. The old horse responded readily enough, and he relaxed a little. That old groom was a damned trouble-making nuisance. All in all, the morning was progressing better than he’d anticipated.
“All right,” a hushed voice finally said.
A blue bonnet appeared over Grey’s shoulder and craned forward over the driver’s perch, peering in the direction of…
Devil a bit. “What are you looking at?”
Miss Perchase uttered a faint squeaking sound.
“I’m trying to see your boots, Your Grace.” Lady Jane, her cheeks crimson, peeked at him from around the rim of her bonnet and vanished behind him again.
“Ah.” He guided the cart around yet another pothole. The last thing he wanted was for Miss Mawgry to vomit on his unseen Hessian boots. Grey scowled. Actually, the very last thing he wanted was for the young chits to report to their headmistress that he’d been encouraging some sort of lascivious behavior. “Given that our…relationship is that of teacher and pupils, I suppose direct questions are acceptable. So yes, I am wealthy.”
“Do you spend a great deal of time in London, Your Grace?” one of the other chits, Miss Potwin, asked, while the other infants congratulated her on her choice of question.
He wondered if they would ever ask anything unexpected. “During the Season, yes. The rest of the year, I have obligations at my—”
Mary Mawgry leaned forward and vomited all over his boots. Reflexively Grey grabbed her shoulder to keep her from toppling off the seat. At that same moment, Old Joe must have decided he was thirsty: declining to follow the curve in the road, he towed them straight to the edge of the pond. The right front wheel dropped into a deep mudhole.
“Bloody—”
Before Grey could complete his curse, the cart tipped sideways into the water. And so did he.
Shrieking females splashed into the water all around him, while the ducks exploded, squawking, into the air. In addition to the water being damned cold, it was also deeper than he expected; as he tried to stand, he submerged completely again.
Mary Mawgry was closest, already paddling for the bank and ungainly in her sodden green gown, Miss Perchase right behind her. The other girls had landed further out in the water, and he swam in their direction, his boots heavy with the weight of the water.
He grabbed Julia Potwin by the elbow as she thrashed around unhelpfully. “This way, Miss Potwin,” he grunted, towing her toward the bank until the water was shallow enough for her to stand.
“Help!” Lady Jane shrieked breathlessly. “Lizzy can’t swim!”
Whipping around, Grey caught sight of the prim straw bonnet just as it sank beneath the murky surface. His chest tight with alarm, he launched himself out into the pond again. As he reached the spot where she’d disappeared, he dove straight down.
With his second grab he caught a handful of material, and hauled upward. As they broke the surface, he held his own breath until she gave a huge gasp for air.
“Thank God.”
The little chit began flailing madly, her elbow ramming him in the cheekbone. “Don’t let me drown!” she gasped, writhing in his grip.
“I won’t, Lizzy. Relax. I’ve got you.”
With a squeak she wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him with a death grip. Grey choked but began towing her toward the bank. They were c
lose enough to make it before she asphyxiated him.
As he caught sight of the rest of the girls struggling onto dry land, he nearly changed his mind and headed for the opposite bank. He’d found Dare and Emma, after all. Or rather, they had found him. Tristan was wrapping a horse blanket around Lady Jane’s shoulders, while Emma Grenville charged down the bank, looking as though she meant to—
Damnation. “Emma, stop!”
She splashed into the water, landing a few yards from him, and immediately began paddling madly in his direction. Lizzy freed one arm from around his neck to grip her headmistress’s sleeve, and at least he could breathe again.
As they reached the bank, Tristan hauled the females up. While Grey bent over to catch his breath, he looked sideways at Emma, standing there like a mother goose with her goslings gathered around her.
The sun outlined her slender body through the wet gown, and Grey stayed crouched over longer than he needed to, taking her in.
“You’ve frightened the ducks,” Tristan drawled, though his gaze was on the young females rather than the pond.
“Frightened myself, too.”
Emma detached herself from her goslings and stomped up to him. “Your Grace, I demand to know what happened! What in the world did you think you were doing, bringing my stu—”
“My students,” he interrupted. “We had an accident.”
She snapped her jaw shut, glaring at him while water dripped off his nose. “This contest is over,” she ground out.
“Then you lose.”
“I—”
“Miss Emma,” Lizzy interrupted, slogging over to the headmistress and plucking her sleeve, “it was just an accident.” She sneezed.
“God bless,” everyone uttered in near unison.
“Thank you. We don’t want you to lose your wager because of us,” the little one continued, then turned to look up at him from beneath her drooping bonnet. “And His Grace saved my life.”
He didn’t feel very heroic. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Oh, no,” Lady Jane piped up, “it was magnificent.”
Tristan cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should get everyone back to the Academy.”
Emma, a blush creeping up her damp cheeks as she continued to glare at Grey, turned her back on him to face Dare. “Yes. I’m afraid, though, that the girls won’t all fit in the phaeton.”
“I’d like to walk,” Mary Mawgry said in a dull voice, her face white.
“Me, too,” Elizabeth echoed immediately, taking Mary’s hand in hers.
The rest of the girls followed suit. Grey eyed them, surprised. Mary’s reluctance to climb back into a carriage, he could understand. The rest of them, though, should have been clamoring for a chance to ride back to the Academy with Tristan and change out of their wet, muddy, and now decidedly unbecoming gowns. Yet they elected to trudge back with their travel-troubled friend.
“We’re walking,” he said. Lifting an eyebrow at Tristan’s skeptical expression, Grey scrambled back down the slippery bank to where Old Joe stood chest-deep in the pond, guzzling water happily. The overturned cart wedged against his backside didn’t seem to bother him in the least.
As he ducked into the water to unfasten the harness, footsteps splashed into the pond behind him. Even with the lemon scent of her hair doused by pond water, he knew who it was. The hairs on his arms prickled. “Stay out of the water, Emma,” he grunted.
“It’s a bit late for that,” she said in the practical tone he’d already become used to hearing from her.
“You shouldn’t have jumped in before, either. I had the situation well in hand.”
“It didn’t appear that way to me. And just how is this preparing them for a London ball?”
He hadn’t quite figured that out himself, but neither did he have any intention of confessing that he’d been prowling for her. “Where did you get this damned mule?” he asked instead.
She stiffened. “Old Joe is a gift from a dear friend. The Academy took him in to save him from the slaughterhouse—and he’s been a valuable asset.”
Grey grunted as he pulled the last fastening free. “You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”
“I’ve never had any difficulty with him.”
“Of course not. The two of you have the same temperament.” Before she could respond to that, he grabbed Old Joe’s halter in one hand and her elbow in the other, and hauled both of them up the bank to dry land.
“Please do not drag me about. I am not a…a horse.”
Wycliffe only grunted, but Emma thought she had made her point. As soon as she got her feet under her, she pulled free of his grip, and without so much as an “I beg your pardon for being so rude and strong,” he let her go.
The sight of her girls thrashing about in the deep water had terrified her to her bones. Knowing now that they were safe filled her with a kind of giddy relief, even though she wanted to be furious at Wycliffe.
“Ladies,” she said, gathering the shivering girls around her again, “why don’t we put our hats and shawls in the phaeton? If Lord Dare doesn’t mind transporting them back to the Academy, that is.”
Lord Dare, the only dry person among them, stood glaring at Wycliffe. “Of course I don’t mind. I feel shabby, though, driving off alone.”
Miss Perchase coughed. “If I might, my lord, this has been quite enough excitement for me.”
“Splendid.” Grey walked over, handed the instructor up into the seat, and then tethered the cart horse to the back of the phaeton. “There. Miss Perchase and Old Joe can keep you company.”
“Not exactly what I had in mind,” the viscount muttered, so quietly that Emma barely made out the words. With a glance in her direction he climbed back up into the high seat. “We’ll alert everyone about the emergency.”
The look the two men exchanged as the phaeton rolled down the road made Emma blush. They couldn’t be fighting over…her, of all people. True, Wycliffe had kissed her once, but he had done that just to distract her from the wager.
“Shall we?” Wycliffe asked, looking elegant despite his dripping tawny hair, soggy cravat, muddy boots, and missing coat. Emma blinked. His damp lawn shirt clung to the muscles of his strong arms and chest, revealing them in clear detail. She doubted there was a spare ounce of fat on his tall frame.
As she lifted her face, he was looking straight at her. Her blush deepened, and he raised an eyebrow. “Is something wrong, Miss Emma?”
“No. Of course not. No thanks to you, though. Come along, ladies.” She looked over her shoulder at him, clenching her jaw against the lure of his raw masculine beauty. “I’m sure you’ll wish to return to Haverly at once and change out of those wet clothes.”
He fell into step beside her as she started up the road. “Not at all. I left my horse at the Academy, anyway.”
“Oh.”
With their bonnets and shawls missing, and in the company of a hatless and coatless man, the lot of them looked like gypsies. Yes, Wycliffe had acted in a heroic manner, and yes, he had in all likelihood saved Lizzy from grave injury or worse, but this was certainly not what she had bargained for when she had agreed to the wager.
“I think we need to revisit the rules of this contest,” she said, in her calmest and most reasonable tone.
“Don’t be a coward.”
“I am not a coward! These girls are my responsibility, Your Grace, whoever is instructing them. Aside from that, your—”
“Call me Wycliffe,” he interrupted, tucking her hand around the damp arm of his shirt.
“I don’t want to call you Wycliffe. And please do not interrupt me.”
“Uh, oh,” Henrietta said from behind them. “The last time Miss Emma told me that, I had to write a five-hundred-word grammatically correct essay on the virtues of not interrupting people.”
Wycliffe lifted an eyebrow. “Is that to be my punishment, Emma?”
His amused expression made it seem an improper question. Everything he said to her, thoug
h, seemed to have some underlying scandalous meaning. “You aren’t one of my students. If you were, you would be in danger of failing out of the Academy.”
The girls giggled. The duke only tugged her a little closer.
“So you teach impertinence toward one’s social superiors?” he asked mildly.
Emma clenched her jaw. “I teach that there are moments when a woman must stand up for herself—particularly when there is no one else to do it for her.”
Wycliffe looked away, apparently engrossed by the flock of crows settling into a nearby birch tree. “Which rules do you wish to alter, Emma?”
She didn’t know when he’d given himself permission to use her first name, but she liked the way he said it, and the drawl in his deep, cultured voice. Drawing a breath, she increased the distance between them, though she didn’t remove her hand from his arm. That would have been rude.
“I worry that whatever wisdom you impart to these students,” she began, searching for the words that would convince him without leaving her open to a counterattack, “will be less significant than the fact that you, the Duke of Wycliffe, sat in a room with them for an extended period of time.”
He was silent for a moment. “We’re fully chaperoned. And I’m not about to damage my reputation or theirs.”
He was right—but she couldn’t tell him her real reason for objecting to his continued presence when she didn’t know it herself. “I don’t think having a chaperone present will matter, Your Grace,” she said doggedly.
“Ladies hire male dance masters, for God’s sake,” he retorted, scowling. “Men hire them for their daughters.”
“And we want to learn about London Society and ballroom decorum,” Julia put in.
Emma glanced over her shoulder at the five girls walking close—far too close—behind them. “Learning about Society won’t do you any good if you’re too ruined to join its ranks. His Grace is a…single gentleman.”
“What do you suggest, then?”
“I suggest that you do the honorable, gentlemanly thing and concede,” she said.
“No.”
She frowned at him. “That’s not very helpful.”
“I’m not here to be helpful—except to my students.”
A Matter of Scandal Page 9