“Very well. I will ring for the carriage,” Constance said.
“There is no need. I rode my horse,” Poppy said.
“Well, you mustn’t ride back alone,” Constance said, aghast. “Good heavens, the ideas you have in that gorgeous head. And they say I am eccentric. Archer, you’ll escort Miss Cavendish home?”
His sister’s face was a caricature of innocence, all wide-eyed, guileless placidity. The face of a person who had hatched a plot and felt it was proceeding along in a swimming manner. He glanced at Poppy to see if she noticed his sister’s obvious chicanery, but instead saw that her face was a careful study of blankness.
How curious.
He was no particular expert in the fairer sex, but in business it behooved one to be perceptive. And if he was not mistaken, Miss Cavendish wore the face of someone who wanted him to escort her, and did not want to admit that she wanted it.
Which meant that he absolutely, categorically would be escorting her to her door.
“Of course I will see Miss Cavendish home,” he said, waving his sister away.
Constance shot him a smug grin and went off, humming a minuet as she left.
“There’s really no need for you to accompany me,” Poppy said when Constance was gone. “It’s not yet dark and I’m an excellent horsewoman.”
“I have no doubt. But given the hour, I would be derelict in my duties as host if I let you ride home unescorted. If you would prefer to take a carriage, I will see that a groom returns your horse to Bantham Park.”
Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “I prefer to ride. Alone. The evening air favors my constitution.”
Was it possible that Miss Cavendish was flirting with him?
“As it does mine,” he agreed. “In fact, I am suddenly overtaken by a most pressing desire for an evening’s solitary exercise. I believe I shall ride to Bantham Park. Alone.”
He strolled off in the direction of the stables.
“Farewell, Miss Cavendish,” he said, pausing to look back over his shoulder. “Do give my compliments to any poachers or highwaymen you should encounter along the road.”
He chose not to let her see his smile as she fell into step beside him.
Chapter 7
It was difficult to seem impressive when one was constantly on the verge of swooning.
All day Poppy had instructed herself to avoid the Duke of Westmead.
There were few benefits to being in his company. First, there was his pedantic and quarrelsome nature. Added to that was his fondness for giving her condescending lectures on business. He was peremptory and demanding, traits she liked to reserve for herself. And he was kind and understood her, which made all his other qualities unnerving.
Dancing with him had been a torture devised by the gods to test her. For there had been a moment, just after they both dissolved in laughter, when their eyes had met and their hands had lingered and she had once again imagined what it would be like if he was to lean in and kiss her.
And worse, wished that he would.
How frustrating that she should spend most of her last decade dodging any signs of cordiality from gentlemen, only to find herself drawn to the one man to whom it was essential she maintain a cool distance.
She was here to impress the Duke of Westmead so as to secure a crucial advantage in trade. One did not win a man’s respect by becoming breathless at the sight of his shoulders.
And now her punishment for being so weak of will was the challenge of riding beside his handsome form, straining to maintain her composure as he peppered her with questions about her very favorite subject: plants.
“What is that tree up ahead?” he asked.
“A smooth-leaved elm.”
“One of my partners recently returned from the British colonies. He was very taken with the tulip trees. Are you familiar with them?”
“Magnolia,” she said. “They’re my favorite. It is the central frustration of my life that it is so difficult to acquire them in a great enough quantity to cultivate here in England.”
“You’ve tried?”
“I never stop trying,” she sighed, thinking of poor, long-suffering Mr. Carpenter.
“What is the difficulty?”
“Dependence on the kindness of one’s friends. Not to mention the perils of the seas.”
“You can’t purchase them from abroad?”
“It’s not that simple. To get new varieties, you need to charm some poor soul into climbing trees and stumping through forests for just the right cones and branches.”
“If you were my partner, Cavendish, I might tell you it is always better to provide incentive than to beg.”
All she heard was “Cavendish.” He had called her by her surname. As though she were a man.
It stung.
It shouldn’t, for everyone knew she was improperly domineering and masculine, and she had always considered it a point of pride. Had she not, a quarter hour ago, enjoyed this very man’s rather discomposed expression when it had dawned on him she intended to ride astride?
But that was just it. The words came from him. Him, whose reactions she found herself minutely attuned to, as though he were a weeping birch branch when she desperately wanted to check the direction of the wind. Him, who had for the first time since her youth made her feel girlish.
It was a brisk dose of reality.
She was being very, very foolish.
“Well, Westmead,” she shot back, hoping to cover her dismay, “it’s not just the begging you’re at the mercy of. It is complex to get plants across the ocean intact. Cuttings grow moldy in the damp. Rats abscond with the seeds. It has taken me years to find a method that doesn’t end in disaster, and even still, my customers’ appetite for new exotics far exceeds what I can get from Virginia or Carolina.”
“It sounds like a market in need of investment.”
“Precisely!” She looked back at him, pleased he had reached the same conclusion she had. “I’ve been pondering the merits of a subscription-based model between nurseries trading overseas.”
“Subscriptions can be risky unless you are sure of adequate custom. Are you?”
“Oh, there’s a hefty appetite for exotic plants,” she said over her shoulder. “The trouble is convincing quality nurseries it is worth the initial investment without a guaranteed—”
“Stop!” he shouted.
She glanced ahead of her just in time to see the low-hanging branch looming much closer than it ought to be. She furiously tugged at the reins, but her horse had far too much momentum. With a sickening clarity she realized she was going to fall off.
And then—humiliation settling in as her balance receded—she did indeed.
Westmead was off his horse and running before she even hit the ground. She had landed, thank God, in a shrub, which had partly broken her fall. But her ankle had wrenched unnaturally, leaving her in a heap, her head shrouded in a tangle of leaves and unruly hair.
Westmead knelt over her. “Speak to me,” he demanded.
“I’m quite all right.” She pushed his hands away and tried to stand. Pain blossomed so quick and hot that sparks shot across her field of vision. She collapsed back into the bush.
“My ankle,” she gasped.
“Let me see.” He crouched over her boot and gingerly touched the offending foot, provoking another rain of stars as the pain radiated up to her shin.
She gasped and clenched her eyes together, but it was too late.
Hot, angry tears instantly soaked her lashes.
To her utter mortification, Westmead immediately noticed.
“No, no,” he said with alarm. He rummaged in his pocket for a handkerchief and held it out. She waved it away.
“Please don’t cry.”
She would give anything not to, as it no doubt made her appear more ridiculous than falling off her horse had. But the exhaustion and stress of the past weeks were mingling with her acute humiliation and the sharp throbbing in her ankle, and the tears simp
ly wouldn’t stop.
The look on his face was so utterly chagrined it made her cry harder.
Hesitantly, he touched her shoulder with his hand.
“I shouldn’t have distracted you. Forgive me.”
She shook her head wordlessly, her embarrassment amplifying her distress, and continued to fall to pieces in a bush.
Helplessly, he reached out and pulled her from the shrub, picking small sticks and leaves from her waistcoat. He helped her to a seated position and then, with a glance at her face, used a stiff arm to put her head against his shoulder and let her weep there, as if she were a distraught child he didn’t quite know what to do with.
She knew she should move away and collect herself. But the solidness of Westmead’s body, his smell of sandalwood and clean linen, the awkward gentleness with which he patted her back, were so comforting she couldn’t force herself to move. She cried into his shirt. His fine linen shirt, which no doubt cost him more than her entire wardrobe.
He silently stroked her back. She should stop him, but it was a feeling her bones remembered from the earliest days of her childhood, before her parents had died and her nurse had gone missing and her uncle’s distant, distracted guardianship had replaced the animal comfort of simple touch. Before she had become so thoroughly, doggedly alone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to collect herself.
“Not as sorry as I am.” He ran a thumb beneath her cheek, smoothing away the last traces of her tears. She lifted her face toward the warmth of his palm, glancing up at his eyes to assess what scornful sentiment she would no doubt see in them. But there was no trace of judgment in his gaze. Just still, dark pools of quiet kindness. She closed her eyes to keep from drowning in them.
And felt his lips brush her cheek.
It happened in a heartbeat, as faint as a breath. She froze, opened her eyes. She saw heat, and shock, in his.
“Christ,” he muttered.
He immediately let go of her and moved away. She was left stunned, her body protesting the abrupt loss of his warmth. It was as distant from the sensation she had once felt in the woods alone with Tom as a feeling could be.
The Duke of Westmead cleared his throat. “It seems that I must beg your forgiveness once more, Miss Cavendish. I am unfit for company.”
She shook her head in silence. She didn’t want an apology. Her entire body vibrated with what it wanted: Do it again.
But he had jolted to his feet, and the moment was broken.
Ever-loving hell.
What had he just done?
And why?
He did not know what he wanted more: to take Miss Cavendish back in his arms and comfort her, or to go barreling through the woods in horror that this woman he had no business laying hands on was turning him into a puddle.
He settled on inspecting her offending ankle.
“It’s not broken. But you won’t be able to walk on it.”
She looked at him darkly. She was no longer crying. “I’m sorry. I was giddy with talking of plants.”
He lifted her up. “It was my fault. Here, put your arms around my neck.”
He tried not to focus on the fact that she was light and soft, but his body had missed the feeling of a woman in his arms. Being here, in these woods, he felt it keenly.
He lifted her gingerly onto his horse and settled her there with as brotherly a pat as he could muster. “There we are. Try not to fall off while I see to your mount.”
He winked.
She snorted. He collected her mare and tied it to his animal, then swung up into his saddle in front of her.
“Hold tightly to my waist and lean on me if you feel dizzy.” He waited as she adjusted herself against him, trying not to enjoy the feeling of her straddling his hips with her thighs.
When she was settled, he signaled to the horses to reverse course.
Poppy tapped his shoulder. “Your Grace. You’re going the wrong way.”
“We’re much closer to Westhaven. I’m taking you back. Your ankle needs ice, and rest.”
“My household will be alarmed if I’m not back before dark.”
He doubted it. The place had been deserted when he’d visited. If she had proper servants, they certainly had not been hovering about awaiting their mistress’s return. It occurred to him, not for the first time, how alone she was.
“We will send word from Westhaven.”
He rode slowly, conscious of Poppy’s sharp intakes of breath at every sudden movement of the horse. He was also conscious of the light pressure of her fingers on his waist. She no doubt held him that way to avoid a more direct grip and would be aghast if she knew she was teasing the sensitive flesh above his hips.
He tried to be more aghast at himself for enjoying it.
He dismounted as soon as they reached the stables and called for the nearest groom, who steadied the horses as Archer lifted Poppy down and carried her inside the kitchen yard.
The buzzing kitchen came grinding to a halt at the sight of their lord with the crumpled form of Poppy Cavendish suspended in his arms.
Mrs. Todd, the housekeeper, came hurrying toward them. “Your Grace. Miss Cavendish! What’s happened?”
“Miss Cavendish was thrown from her horse. Have ice and clean linen brought to my study and a room made up for her. And see that necessities are sent over from Bantham Park. She’ll need enough for a few days.”
“A few days?” Poppy objected.
“There’s no sense in you spending hours hauling back and forth across forest roads on a ruined ankle. I insist you stay. Lady Constance will not hear otherwise.”
Phrasing it that way added a veneer of propriety, though propriety ranked low among his concerns. He wanted her here, where he could see she was looked after. He didn’t like to think of her all alone and injured in a distant house so recently visited by death.
She glanced up at him, then down at her rapidly expanding ankle. It was already swollen majestically compared to the rest of her slim leg, puffed under her stocking like a snake that had swallowed an apple.
“Oh, very well,” she sighed, and wrapped her arm around his neck to be carried onward, suddenly as imperious as a queen. “But do get on with it.”
A fire had been left burning in the duke’s study, and Poppy tried not to shout with pain as Westmead settled her on a velvet sofa in front of it. He disappeared for a moment and returned with a stack of pillows, seemingly from his own bedchamber, which he used to create a small mountain to elevate her leg.
Satisfied, he turned to his imposing desk and poured a generous quantity of amber liquid out of a decanter and into a fat glass tumbler. He swallowed it down in a single gulp, refilled it, and handed it to her.
“Drink this. It will numb the pain.”
She took a tentative sip. Pear and smoke and vanilla, followed by a ragged burning in her throat. She sputtered as it went down.
He placed himself at the opposite end of the sofa, where he sat staring unhappily at her protuberant ankle.
“I will go find Constance to help you with your boot and stockings.”
Poppy shuddered at the thought. Constance’s hysterics at the sight of the puffed ankle would be possibly worse than the pain itself.
“Must you?” she countered. She sipped again at the brandy, which distracted from the pain in her ankle by producing a new one in her throat.
“It’s important to get the swelling down if you hope to walk in the near future.”
She knew he was only being polite by summoning his sister, but she was not one to observe the tedious proprieties of feminine comportment if it came at the expense of the use of her limb.
“It will be much faster if you do it,” she suggested, taking another fortifying sip of the brandy.
He gave her a strangled look, and suddenly she felt very bold.
“Go ahead,” she commanded. “Carefully.”
Something inside her knew that given how much she had enjoyed his embrace on the forest floo
r, and the feeling of his waist below her hands as they rode back to Westhaven, it was a mistake to demand that the Duke of Westmead undress her.
Even just her ankle.
Even for her health.
Nevertheless she waved him airily toward her foot.
“Right, then. Shout if I hurt you.”
“It’s not my ankle I worry for—it’s my pride,” she heard herself say. This remark was intended to be made silently, in her head, but evidently it had been allowed out of her mouth by Westmead’s brandy.
“Why is it that every time I am near you,” her mouth continued to say, never mind it hadn’t consulted her, “it ends in my utter humiliation?”
He paused. “Humiliation? I’m just removing your shoe, Cavendish. Is your foot so unsightly?”
She closed her eyes and decided to continue to talk to distract herself from the pain.
“Cavendish. You would call a lady by her surname—like a man?”
“Only if she were domineering and obstinate, like a man,” he said, not without a distinct note of appreciation.
“Then I shall call you Westmead.”
“My name,” he said affably, “is Archer.”
“Do you know, Archer, that in the four days I have known you, I have been injured and embarrassed more times than in the previous year of my life?”
“Is that so?” he asked, all innocence, removing the lace from her boot.
“Indeed. First you falsely accused me of committing fraud. And being betrothed. To an oaf.”
He very gently pulled the shoe from her foot. “A lying oaf,” he clarified. “But I was wrong. Surely that was my embarrassment, not yours.”
She scoffed. His fingers edged beneath the hem of her breeches for her garter and flicked efficiently at the tie.
He lifted the thin fabric of her stocking and carefully began to roll it down her calf. The sensation of him slowly pulling the stocking down her leg made her eyes shoot open. Not with pain—he was being delicate with her ankle—but with awareness of his fingers on her bare leg.
The Duke I Tempted Page 6