As if the duke could read her thoughts—oh, he truly was a devil, all right—he said, “Don’t fret about the servants. They won’t dare repeat a word that’s said, not if they don’t want me to send them straight to—well, let’s just say the devilish duke’s other, more infamous abode?”
Our. Lord. Which. Art. In. Heaven.
She continued backing her way to the dining room doorway. “If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, because I know of no other way to ruin a lady, then I must say, Your Grace...”
And just like that, her mind went blank.
He remained standing at the head of the table, hands behind his back. “What must you say, Miss Logan? So there are only two ways to ruin a lady? Publish a book she wrote, and...what other way?”
“I believe you know what other way.”
“I suppose you have no wish to spell it out in front of the servants?”
“I have no wish to spell it out in front of you!” she exclaimed. “Why would you even wish to do such a thing, when I—” She clapped her hands to her cheeks again.
“When you have smudges on your cheeks?”
But it wasn’t just that, she thought bleakly. Oh, it was more than that. It was worse than that. The duke wasn’t just a devil.
He was just like Harry.
Without another word, Cecily turned and fled out of the dining room and straight for the front door. She flung open the door herself and lifted her skirts as she bounded down the front steps and across the forecourt. But instead of dashing down the front drive, she took a shortcut across the verdant hilly meadow.
Gasping and panting for breath, she didn’t stop running until the ground suddenly vanished beneath her and with a shriek she plummeted straight down.
Down, down into the clutches of a devil ready to seize her soul.
Chapter Four
Dane knew it was the wrong thing to say at about the same moment he said it. Yet once she fled, he also knew it would do no good to call after her or even pursue her. She would only keep running, and if he tried to catch her, that would only reinforce her admittedly well-founded belief that he was a rake and a rogue, if not a devil.
Devil. That in itself was a scandalous word, almost an obscenity. One didn’t say it in polite company, any more than one went into polite company with ink smudges on her face. Miss Cecily Logan was quite the hoyden. He’d had no idea all these years.
And now that he had the idea, he was intrigued.
Upon hearing the front door open, he casually sauntered from the dining room to said door, which remained gaping. He watched as she fled across the adjacent meadow, where lurked a ha-ha. Did she know about it? He called out to her, but she either ignored him or by now was too far away to hear.
He called for a horse. Moments later, he was galloping across the meadows toward the ha-ha. She was nowhere in sight. He rode his horse parallel to the precarious edge of the ha-ha that slowly bowed into a curve, till he glimpsed a mud-splattered Miss Logan lying on the steep slope facing the stone wall hidden from view on Dane’s side. Her arms were stretched to her sides, her feet far apart, and her eyes wide open to the sky.
“Oh, my God,” he muttered. He’d leaped over the ha-ha many times on this horse, so both of them knew the hazards. He spurred his horse to jump over it now. Upon reaching the other side of the ditch, Dane dismounted and dashed over to where Miss Logan was sprawled.
But one didn’t fall into a ha-ha from the top of the stone wall only to land on their back on the opposite slope. She must have crawled out of the muddy ditch below, a fairly good sign she wasn’t too seriously injured.
She continued staring at the sky, gasping for breath.
“I won’t ask if you’re all right,” he said, doffing his hat and tossing it aside as he knelt beside her, “for evidently you’re not, or you wouldn’t be lying here like this. Do you think you’ve broken any bones?”
Her eyes still fixed on the sky, she whispered, “I don’t know. I haven’t tried to get up and walk. I’ve had the wind knocked out of me.”
Dane glanced at the stone wall. She’d fallen about five feet, and since the ditch was full of muddy water, it was quite possible the fall had been soft enough that she was able to crawl out of it. But getting to her feet could be quite another matter.
“I’m very sorry about this, Miss Logan,” and he meant it. “I don’t suppose you’d allow me to check for any broken bones or sprains?”
“I’m sure I haven’t broken anything, for nothing is askew and I did manage to crawl out of that ghastly ditch, after landing facedown in it.” She had plenty of mud on her face to prove it. “I’m not really feeling any unbearable pain anywhere.” A brief pause, then she added, “At least not in my bones.”
He pulled out his handkerchief. “Then where, if not in your bones?”
“Not a place you can reach unless you cut me open,” she murmured.
“You think you have internal injuries?” With the handkerchief he gingerly wiped the mud from her face. The ink smudges, alas, remained. Only the passage of time, passed with hours of scrubbing, would make those disappear.
“I do believe I’m all right, Your Grace. I’m only stunned and winded. I’m quite certain I shall survive.” She said those last words as if she could survive anything, based on the fact she already had.
He gazed into her blue eyes, satisfied at the normal size of both pupils that seemed to gaze through him, if not past him, as if he might be invisible to her. “How are your head and neck?”
“I must not have broken them, or I might not have made it this far,” she said. “I’ve been lying here long enough. Perhaps it’s time I tried to sit up?”
“Perhaps, but slo—” He broke off his words as she heaved herself to a sitting position, staring straight ahead at the treacherous stone wall.
He longed to put his arms around her, if only to steady her. He watched her carefully for any signs she might faint and drop back onto the grass.
“It’s been so many years since I’ve been this way,” she said. “I completely forgot about this ha-ha. I should have remembered. At the very least, I should not have come this way. I should have—”
“This isn’t your fault, Miss Logan. I shouldn’t have said what I said back in the dining room. I can’t blame you for running away. Indeed, I wouldn’t have blamed you for slapping me before you did so.”
To his relief—nay, delight—she finally turned her head to regard him, as if she only now realized he was there. “Believe me, I thought of that, but didn’t because I knew it would do no good. So I just ran.”
“Why do you think it would do no good?”
“You’re bigger and stronger than me. Therefore, you would have fended me off with the greatest of ease. And in doing so, you might have taken a firm hold of me and—” She said no more, but she said enough. He surmised that she must have tried doing it before, with some other rogue. Who? For some reason, Dane wanted to know, and if it was in that book she wrote.
“I assure you I would have done no such thing, Miss Logan. As it is, I should not have said what I said. It was wrong, and I apologize. Now that you’ve been sitting up for a few moments, do you think you can stand? Then we’ll see if you can stand on both feet, and maybe even walk.”
“That’s a good idea,” she agreed, and she bent her right knee in preparation to do so.
“Will you permit me to assist you?” After the stupid thing he said in the dining room that caused her to flee, she probably wouldn’t welcome his touch, even after his apology. He noted she did not accept the apology, but then again, he didn’t exactly give her a chance to do so and— bloody hell, what was wrong with him? He was really putting too much thought and analysis into the whole thing, and that was unlike him.
Maybe because Cecily Logan was so unlike other women of his acquaintance?
“Let me try and do it myself,” she said, as she bent the other knee, and with her hands and the steep slope for leverage, rose pa
rt way to her feet only to yelp and nearly collapse back to the ground before Dane caught her.
“It’s my left foot,” she said, wincing. “It hurt the second I put my weight on it.”
“Then you either twisted or sprained it,” he said. “I don’t want to suggest you sit back down on the ground so I can look at it, but perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I sat you on my horse? There you can let your left foot hang down, the better for me to examine it.”
Miss Logan craned her neck to survey the horse, looking not a little chagrined at the prospect. “I haven’t been on a horse since I was a little girl.”
“You sound fearful. Did you fall off the horse?”
“No. It was the time you rescued me from the treehouse.”
“How well I remember that day. But surely you weren’t frightened of my horse? I didn’t let you fall off then, and I won’t now.”
“Only how will I mount him with my bad ankle?”
“Is that what has you so missish? I shall pick you up and place you in the saddle myself, just as I did that long-ago day.”
Panic tore across her face, as if he just announced he planned to ravish her right here on this wretched slope.
He couldn’t understand it. He knew other women who would feign twisted ankles, even broken necks, in hopes he would pick them up and carry them off not to his horse, but to his bed. He might have wondered what it was about him that struck terror in Miss Logan’s heart, except she wasn’t too terrified to come to his house and warn him of some absurd blackmail threat over a book she wouldn’t admit to having written.
He had to concede that was more original than feigning an injury to grab his attention.
He cocked his head to one side. “Unless you’d prefer to hop on one foot all the way home.”
She averted her gaze and creased her brow, as if she was actually considering that. “Well, it’s only about a half-mile from here. And I’m sure if I could find a big enough stick lying around somewhere...”
What the hell? She was considering it. It took all his strength—and he prided himself on having quite a bit of it—not to shout his response. “Are you quite out of your mind, Miss Logan? That half-mile will seem like a hundred miles if you attempt that. And what sort of gentleman would I be if I let you do it? Or are you trying to justify my reputation as some sort of devil? I mustn’t be seen to do anything that might contradict the narrative etched in stone by polite society, eh? Or inked in paper by your author friend.”
“I have no wish to impose or be a bur—” She yelped again as he scooped her up and carried her over to his horse, where he gently placed her in the saddle.
“I apologize for it not being a sidesaddle. Grab that pommel there—yes, that right there—and I will lead my horse very slowly to your house. You cannot possibly walk such a distance on an injured ankle.”
“Aunt Thea isn’t going to like this.”
He grabbed the bridle and began slowly leading the horse. “Why? Because she thinks it means I might have to marry you, and she’d rather I marry her daughter, instead? I have no wish to marry a first cousin.”
“No, that’s not it, or she wouldn’t have taken Rebecca to Bath this summer, or be taking her back to London next month for the Little Season.”
“What about you?”
She didn’t answer. He turned to gaze up at her. She looked bewildered.
“Did you hear me, Miss Logan? I asked, what about you?”
“Yes, Your Grace, I heard.”
“Well? ’Tis not a riddle.”
“What about me?”
“Did you not go to Bath with your aunt and cousin?”
“I did.”
“And will you be going with them to London to find a husband?”
She nearly sputtered with the scorn of it all.
“Haven’t you had a season?” he inquired.
She didn’t answer. That was as good as a denial.
“I see. Very well.” He concentrated on leading the horse and conjuring a way to expose her as the author of that book. He saw no need to inform her that the disposition of the book was now in his own hands, not Harry’s. “Perhaps I shall speak to Cousin Harry and make it plain that you have no wish to see that book publi—”
“No, Your Grace. You must tell him that you have no wish to see the book published.”
“But then I’d be lying.” Are you?
“He already knows that—that the author has no wish to see it published. He won’t refrain unless you pay him not to.”
And here Dane thought for a moment that he might have tricked her into revealing herself. “Well, it just so happens I have no intention of paying him. Why should I? My ducal word—along with my ducal powers, and ducal wrath—should be enough. That, and the threat of thrashing him within an inch of his life. I shall tell him so as a favor for you and your overly timorous, mousy little friend—maybe she really is a mouse at that—and ask nothing in return. How does that sound?”
She winced at his words, undoubtedly offended by his description of her imaginary friend. “Tell him only that you will not pay him? But then the book will still be published! Had you only agreed in the first place that you would stop it being published, I might not have fled and fallen into a ha-ha.”
“Do you blame me for your current state?” he asked sharply. “You fled simply because I asked a question that you didn’t answer. I even apologized for asking it, yet you haven’t accepted the apology. However, I do concede that I did not give you the chance to accept the apology. You may do so now—or you may limp the rest of the way home, since you seemed so insistent on doing so a short while ago.”
“Be assured I do not blame Your Grace for my current state,” she replied. “I blame myself for approaching you in the first place, when it was hardly proper for me to do so. Indeed, some might argue that because I did so, that opened the door for you to ask a—a—”
“A question?”
“Yes, but I was trying to think of a suitable adjective. ‘Impertinent’ doesn’t seem to be the right word for a question asked by a duke, and since I’m the one who was being improper, I couldn’t very well say that you asked an ‘improper’ question, either.”
“God’s wounds!” he exclaimed. “And I say that because ‘zounds’ doesn’t seem to be the right interjection in this case, either. I needed something with two syllables. So now you blame yourself for the question I asked? Which, I suppose, might explain why you haven’t accepted my apology?”
“You may suppose that.”
“And I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you to blame Harry for all of this?”
“No, they’d say it’s still the fault of my friend the mouse—as Your Grace calls her—for writing that book in the first place.”
“They? What about you? Whom do you blame? Surely you have your own thoughts.”
“Should I assume, therefore, that you see nothing wrong with a woman having thoughts of her own?”
“You may certainly make that assumption,” he said, tugging on the horse’s bridle as they approached a stile. “Well, here we are. There’s the dower house over yonder. I shall have to help you out of the saddle and set you on the stile while I and my horse leap over the fence.” He glanced back up at her to see that her eyes were as wide and as blue as ever. He added, “I’ve done it many a time before.”
“And then you’ll come back for me?”
“No, I thought I’d just leave you sitting on the stile and let you crawl or hop the rest of the way home on your own,” he retorted. “Where, Miss Logan, did you ever get the idea that I’m such a devil I would treat you that way?” He hit the heel of his hand against his brow. “Oh, that’s right. How quickly I forget. That book your shrew of a friend wrote.”
Aptly enough, Miss Logan responded to that with an indignant little squeak.
“Pray, why would she even write it if she had no wish to see it published?” he asked.
“For her own amusement, I daresay.”
&n
bsp; Dane had to wonder what sort of amusement Miss Logan derived from writing about a duke named Madfury who, by reason of his name and the book’s title, had to be the sort of unsavory character she should wish to avoid?
Still waters, he thought, lifting his hands in a motion to place them around her waist. Somewhere deep beneath her muddy, ink-smudged façade, wild currents eddied and swirled.
He helped her slide off the saddle and onto her one good foot, then assisted her in hopping over to the stile. “You did quite well your second time on a horse, and you weren’t even seated properly in the saddle.”
She seemed out of breath as she perched herself on the stile. “Maybe, once you and your horse are on the other side of this fence, I might let you carry me again—if it isn’t too much trouble. I’ve already been—”
“No, you have not already been a great deal of trouble,” he said, swinging into the saddle. Something told him that Willard and Thea must consider her very existence a great deal of trouble. He couldn’t begin to imagine what that was like.
He knew something of her family history. Her father had been the younger brother of the previous Earl of Ashdown; her mother, also Thea’s sister, the daughter of the previous Marquess of Frampton. Miss Logan’s mother had died of a fever contracted while traveling to London, while her father, who served in the Royal Navy, had died at Trafalgar. No provision had been made for her by either side of the family, save for placing her under the care of her maternal aunt who was married to Dane’s uncle, Lord Willard Armstrong. Small wonder she had no marriage prospects at her age. She’d been hidden away in the country all these years, with nothing to do but indulge her imagination in writing stories, for it seemed that imagination was all she had.
Yet Dane was impressed that she wrote. He longed to tell her so, but didn’t want to mortify her any more than he had already. All he could do, for the time being, was sport with her enough that she might confess the truth on her own.
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