“I will soon be twenty-eight. Not decrepit, but I haven’t the youth gentlemen look for in a bride.”
“A false statement.”
“Well. Yes. Again, you are correct. After my good fortune became known, I refused the offers of six or seven gentlemen at least.”
“Not one of them tempted you?”
“One or two, perhaps.” She fell serious. “To marry in haste did not seem wise. My life was in such upheaval, and in all honesty, those who approached me or my cousin with offers were not gentlemen I knew well.”
“That is a commendable caution.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “No one you know well came forward?”
Her heart skipped. He could not know about her past or that she’d hoped, for a time, that the man who’d taken her to bed would call on her and lay his heart at her feet. He hadn’t, and she’d been a fool to think he might. She had never been a suitable wife. They had not suited in that manner, and they’d both known it.
“If I were to marry, and I think that unlikely, sir, I had rather marry a gentleman whom I admire and respect.”
“Someone who admires and respects you, one hopes.”
“Yes. Precisely.” She glanced down, then back at him. He remained slouched on his chair, but everything else about him was alert.
“I will write to my banker and my solicitor. Mr. Madison will reply because I will have instructed him to do so. Consult with him and decide if you wish to put yourself in his hands. Mr. Goodman, my solicitor, will call on you. He is at Killhope nearly every day.”
Outside, the light changed as clouds moved across the winter sun. The shadows of his face changed with the light, and she thought of him lying in bed as the morning sun changed the light. “That is beyond generous. Thank you.”
His response was immediate, and not what she expected from him. “I do not like your cousin, nor the way he behaved toward you.”
Slowly, she frowned, and he met her gaze head-on. “That is not Louisa’s fault, you must know that.”
He sat straight. “If you mean, did my dislike of him prevent me from making an offer I would have regretted, the answer is no.”
Thank God. Thank God. Louisa’s heart was safe. “You won’t regret your decision. You won’t.”
“I assure you, I do not.”
“I promise you, you will carry away the woman you love. What is a father-in-law you do not care for when you have all that your heart and soul require?”
His body stilled, and she had the awful premonition that she had said something he found objectionable. “Thank you for your advice.”
She put a hand on his arm, desperate to repair the damage of her misstep, whatever it had been. “I’ll write to my cousin Clay. I have nothing to lose by telling him he has made himself disagreeable to you. He will take measures. He will. Don’t allow one man’s unpleasantness destroy your future happiness.”
“I have no plans to do so.” He retreated behind the cool green of his eyes, and her heart constricted. She’d said something wrong to make him so distant, and she’d give anything to know what. A clock somewhere near chimed the hour. “I’ll take my leave. I will arrange the purchase of the gig and a horse. Do not be astonished if I send a man round for you to interview. He will have a character from me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.”
“You haven’t.”
She searched his face, and he was impenetrable. Impassive. “Liar,” she whispered, her chest tight.
They locked gazes, and she felt the connection to her toes. He reached for his tea, forgotten there on the top of the desk, and again she lost herself in the intensity of his eyes. “What a remarkable coincidence.”
“Miss Clay?”
“The green of my china is an almost exact match for your eyes.”
He held up his tea cup and examined the color, and she did likewise, in that she studied the cup and then his eyes, and he obliged her by looking at her without blinking, and that made them both laugh. “Now you have taken your china into dislike.”
“I haven’t at all.” Relief that he wasn’t annoyed any longer made her giddy. “You have pretty eyes, Duke. I like my china even better now that I know the color is Killhope green.”
“Am I to rest easy knowing that every night you’ll take a knife in hand and think of my eyes?”
“Yes.” She burst out laughing. “Yes, Your Grace. Every night an attack.” Elbows on the desktop, she propped her chin atop her interlaced fingers. “I wish you would speak like this more often.”
“I wish to stay on good terms with all my neighbors. And their knives.” He put down his tea and straightened the papers he’d brought.
“I think I may be the only person alive who knows you are amusing.”
“And I hope, Miss Clay, that you keep my secret.”
Chapter Seven
‡
Oxthorpe gave his horse its head, and his mare left the path and flew across the field. He’d had stallions with less strength and grace than his mare. She gathered herself to take the hedge, and they were airborne. Flying. They took the ditch between two fields, the stone fence after another. She knew the route for this morning’s ride and kept her gallop another two hundred yards before she slowed and trotted to the path that would take them downhill to the Lyft.
The air was crisp, though last night’s snow hadn’t stayed on the ground. Another day of unusually mild weather for the time of year, then. Undoubtedly to be soon followed by a storm that would make them long for a day such as this one. As yet, the sky was gray with no threat of rain or snow.
Ahead of him, a hare darted from beneath the bramble on his left. His mount danced a bit, but she was not a horse that startled easily. The hare more slowly zig-zagged across the grass in the direction of yet more bramble. Not a hare, after all. From the looks of the creature, an Angora rabbit; someone’s escaped livestock. He did not keep Angoras, though for all he knew, Miss Clay did.
The pond that marked a portion of the boundary between his property and Miss Clay’s came into sight. If he were to look behind him, he would see the distant towers of Killhope. Were he to continue downhill and past the pond, he’d end up at Hope Springs where only a faint curl of smoke revealed its location.
Legally, the pond was his, but previous occupants had for years been permitted to fish here. Edith, however, was unlikely to lay claim to that right. He would have to mention he did not mind if she sent her gamekeeper to fish there. She’d hired a local man into the position vacated by the previous gamekeeper who’d retired when the property changed hands. A word with him might be in order on that subject, as well as an inquiry about wayward Angoras.
He dismounted on the Killhope side of the water, away from the stream that fed into the Lyft. When he returned to Killhope Castle, it would be to ten years of work to be done in a day. Letters to sort, documents to read. Accounts, reports, and bills to review. Letters to write; a mile of them. Even here in the country, so far from London, there would be callers to meet and appointments to keep.
If it were any season but winter, he’d go for a swim and delay his return to duty. He examined the water. Barely a ripple across the surface. Any ice there might have been earlier in the morning had long melted. The day was cold, but not freezing. There was no reason not to brave one last swim of the year.
He stripped off and laid his clothes on shrubs near where his horse examined the vegetation for edible shoots. Which his mare found. Naked, he waded into the water. Cold. Damned cold, but not freezing. He’d taken colder baths in his life. Either he was man enough to face the cold or not. He struck out and stroked as fast as he could, pushing himself.
Faster than his usual pace, for he wanted the heat of exertion, the burn of muscles used. Faster. Faster yet. He reached the other side, gasping, used up and glad for every thud of his pulse. He stood in hip-deep water, wishing he had someone here to time him. He had not swum so fast in all his life. The snap of cold air cut through him, invi
gorated him, reminded him he could feel. He stood, eyes closed, face turned to the sky. He did feel.
“Duke.”
He knew her voice without looking. A calming timbre, and so often with a hint of amusement. In London, and later in Tunbridge Wells, he had often fancied no one but him heard that sliver of wit. How could any man hear that and not be fascinated? He did not move. One did not display one’s nude body to a woman whom one was not about to take to bed. It was unlikely that would happen. But, well. The damage was done, wasn’t it? Most of his privity was under water.
“You are on my side of the pond.”
Hands on his hips, he looked at her. The world went from gray to colors—the backdrop of green fields and woods behind her. Ebony cloak with a flash of ermine lining, a dress of bronze and green, gloves to match the green.
He said, “Killhope lands include the pond.”
He did not want to go to his grave knowing he had risked nothing for the woman he wanted. He wasn’t an ass, though. Or if he was, he did not wish to give her incontrovertible evidence of the fact. What to say to her, then, when he knew he was likely to speak too gruffly?
She cocked her head, cheeks pink from the cold he did not yet feel. “Does that mean I have less property when the water is high and more when it’s low? That hardly seems fair.”
“I’ll have the survey copied for you.” A safe reply. As dull as that stack of correspondence in his office.
She pursed her lips and then smiled like it was spring. “It’s not as if I shall raise an army and battle you for possession.”
He returned her gaze. “If this were Edward’s time,” he said, “or Elizabeth’s, or any of the Henrys, I’d marry you, and the property would be mine.”
She broke into a grin. “You’d come to my house in the dead of night and carry me off?”
He willed her to understand how little this was in jest. “I would appeal to my sovereign and come away with a royal decree that we wed immediately.”
“A better solution than armies poised to battle.” She stood several feet from the edge of the pond. Gaze averted. He’d seen that absent look from her dozens of times in London. She thought herself invisible, and was not. Not to him. This was the second time he’d mentioned marriage to her. The second time she heard nothing but his words.
“At any rate,” she went on, “I shan’t dispute that you are currently in the water, whichever of us it belongs to. But you’ll catch your death if you stay there.”
“I won’t.”
“It is winter, Your Grace. And as you once sagely advised me, only a fool goes out in the cold.”
He had a mad urge to wade out of the pond and—What sort of monster would impose his naked self on a woman? She would not appreciate a display of male nudity she had not asked to encounter. She hadn’t asked and wasn’t about to, for pity’s sake. He stayed in the water. “It is not cold.”
Steadfastly, she smiled at the vista to her right. “How odd, do you not agree, that we two are within ten feet of each other and have entirely different experiences of the temperature?”
“No.”
“It cannot be significantly colder where I stand.”
The wind picked up, and the cold bit hard enough to prickle the surface of his skin. He willed himself not to rub his arms.
She peeked at him, and her eyes widened. “Shall I fetch your clothes?”
“No.” He ought to say something more. Do something. But what? Swim away? That seemed abrupt.
No one had expected him, of all men, to pay attention to a woman who wasn’t young anymore, who had no fortune, and who was not particularly handsome. He hadn’t. Not at first. She had been nothing. A companion to her cousin, the young lady whom others thought he ought to marry. He’d thought so himself, until he’d spent more time in conversation with her than Miss Louisa Clay.
What to say? He had no experience with situations like this. He had no difficulty with women. In the main, he didn’t. He had a mistress he liked well enough, currently in London. She entertained him in bed because he made it convenient for her to be there exclusively. They understood their relationship and its boundaries.
He imagined himself saying, May I ask a favor of you?
And she, not knowing what he intended, would likely reply, Shall I fetch your clothes?
He could point to the other side of the pond and say, Would you go there, take my watch, and time how long it takes me to swim back?
She’d hurry to his clothes and find his watch. She’d raise her hand as a signal to prepare himself, and he would wave back and prepare himself for the return swim. He’d swim the way he had before, fast and faster yet, and when he reached the other side, he’d stand, water sluicing off him.
She’d clutch his watch, all smiles, and God save his soul, he wouldn’t care in the least that her smile came at the cost of his dignity. His dignity could go to the devil if it meant she smiled because of him. A record, he’d say. My fastest swim yet.
None of that happened.
None.
Because it was unthinkable that he could ask her that. If he did, he’d not manage the right words nor speak in the right voice. He’d imply she would steal his watch while she did him this ridiculous, absurd, undignified favor that presumed a familiarity between them that did not exist.
She would feel, as he did, that such a question was inappropriate and unbecoming of him. Insulting. He shivered, once.
Before him, she sent a rueful look to the skies. “Forgive me for keeping you.” She curtsied. “Good day to you, Your Grace.”
“Miss Clay.” He watched her stride away, and only when she was out of sight did he make the return swim to the Killhope side. He was bloody cold and never so glad in all his life that he not been a fool.
He could not have borne her thinking him a fool.
Chapter Eight
‡
A gentleman’s boot stood directly in Edith’s way. She was on the path that led from the rear of Hope Springs and wound upward to the ridge above the Vale of West. The boot was upright, as if the owner had carefully placed it there to fend for itself, the devil may care for its fate. Precisely and exactly there. It was maroon leather and an exact match for the one-half of a pair of boots that had been deposited in her driveway the day she’d walked to The Duke’s Arms and met Oxthorpe himself. How odd to encounter it again. Here. A walk of many minutes from her house or Killhope, for that matter.
She was halfway through a favorite ramble of hers that took her past the pond, though not to it, and up the hill with a view of the vale that took her breath every time she saw it. A thin layer of snow covered the ground, already more melted than not. The grass remained crunchy with frost.
She had no expectation she would again encounter the duke here, naked or otherwise. This was now in doubt. Here was his boot. Might not more of his clothing be nearby?
She picked up the boot and detoured to a point where she could see enough of the pond to determine whether the duke was there and might merely have dropped his boot. However, she saw no sign of Oxthorpe or his clothing.
Killhope was half a mile distant. Hope Springs was a mile and a half away. She set off for the castle with his boot tucked under her arm. Though the castle sat atop a hill that made the towers visible from most everywhere in Hopewell-on-Lyft, much of the structure was hidden by dense growths of oaks and pines. At the border between the two properties, the footpath she’d been following turned to a groomed path that led downhill and then, abruptly, uphill to the castle.
She emerged from the tree-shaded path into a meadow that would have been pretty but for the forbidding stone walls of Killhope at the other side. A driveway of finely crushed and raked gravel swooped around from the front and led to the stable block to her right.
The rear gates, tall, black ironwork with a griffin on the left side and a swan on the right, were open. Massive wooden doors were locked in place against the stone walls. As she walked through the gate, she felt very smal
l indeed and unduly aware of the holes above through which Oxthorpe soldiers would have poured boiling water or oil onto enemies.
Killhope’s inner courtyard, bisected with a raked gravel path that led to the front doors, also open, could have held an army. Not so long ago, it surely must have. The Fletcher family had begun their history of nobility as original Earls of the Marches. Groomed lawns filled the spaces between the drive and cobbled walkways that led to various wings of the castle, or to the well, or to the cannons chained to the walls and still trained on the countryside below. Perhaps in expectation of another Cromwell?
To her right, across the courtyard, the front gates were taller yet, and not two wooden doors, but one of wood painted black. A massive iron chain held up the portcullis. The duke’s banner flew from the wall above, flapping in the breeze. Everything she saw here was tidy and clean. Even the cannons were immaculate.
She did not, however, see a servant to whom she could entrust the duke’s boot. Smoke curled from the chimneys and curtains had been drawn, so it wasn’t as if no one was home. She considered leaving the boot in the middle of the courtyard, perhaps atop the cover to the well. There would have been a lovely irony in that. She did not.
She walked toward the front gates and found the wooden steps to the entry door. At one time those steps would have been portable, to be put away in the case of a siege or attack. She stood on the top stair facing a brass door knocker in the shape of a swan. She was forced to admit that Killhope, so far, was not the dreary, ancient heap of stone she’d imagined.
The duke’s butler, one Mycroft, opened the door at her knock. From time to time, she saw him in Hopewell-on-Lyft on the duke’s business, and she’d seen him in The Duke’s Arms lifting a pint with her butler when they happened to share the half day her cook was off, too.
Mycroft gave a smile that did not suit the reputation of his most cold and forbidding of employers. “Good morning, Miss Clay.”
She extended the boot with one hand and pointed in the general direction of Hope Springs with the other. “I found this.”
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