No, she would prefer her grandfather’s company to a loveless marriage. She had been tolerably happy with him. He might be irascible, but he was not boring. Although the rest of Lord Eliot’s family held him in the liveliest terror, Alyssa had never permitted him to cow her. Her spirit, coupled with her lively intelligence, had made her his favourite companion. Although she was a mere woman, he often paid her the compliment of arguing his ideas and his conclusions with her before setting them down in the distinguished histories that had won him much acclaim. How Alyssa yearned now for those discussions, for Ormandy Park, and for the neighbours there, especially Lady Braden and her daughter, Letitia.
A small shower cascaded down on Alyssa as she rode beneath the wet leaves of a horse chestnut’s spreading branches, and one large drop hit the tip of her nose. She looked over her shoulder at Oliver’s young groom, who was following her at a respectful distance. Oliver insisted that the lad accompany her whenever she rode. She agreed to this, although she privately thought that the dull, raw-boned youth of eighteen, who had not yet been properly trained, was of little use.
The fog was growing thicker, obscuring the dripping trees and giving them an eerie, ethereal appearance, and Alyssa did not notice the tiny figure that darted out of the milky mist as she trotted by. With an unintelligible cry, it grabbed at the skirt of her riding-habit.
This unexpected assault from the side frightened her high-strung chestnut, and he reared violently. Suddenly Alyssa was fighting to retain her seat, control the frightened animal, and keep his plunging hooves from striking the child, who stood rooted by terror instead of attempting to dodge away.
To her horror, although she heard no impact of hoof against flesh and bone, she saw the little boy fall unconscious to the muddy ground.
Alyssa, struggling desperately, at last imposed her will on the rearing chestnut and managed to quiet him as the big black she had seen earlier galloped up, its rider dismounting even before it stopped beside her.
She found herself staring down into hazel eyes flecked with gold, set in a classically handsome face, with its straight nose and strong jaw. The penetrating eyes with their heavy brows made their owner seem a little frightening despite the concern that she saw in them. Tall, lean, and impeccably garbed in a russet green riding-coat, snowy white neckcloth, pristine buckskin breeches, and jackboots that had been polished to a high gloss, he moved with a singular grace. From a distance his trim body and thick crop of dark, curly hair had misled Alyssa into thinking him to be about her own age, but now she saw that he was a few years older.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, anxiety in his soft voice. “No,” Alyssa replied. Among her family, she was known for her ability to maintain a level-headed poise in any emergency. Although now she was much shaken by what had occurred, she retained an outwardly calm demeanour.
He asked mockingly, “What, no hysterics?”
“I have no time to waste on such nonsense.” Her contempt for this weakness was apparent in her tone. “That poor child needs help.”
The newcomer cast a fulminating glance at Oliver Hagar’s groom, who had made no attempt to come to her aid but had watched with slack-j awed paralysis as she struggled with the chestnut. “That fool is of no use whatsoever,” the stranger snapped, helping her to dismount.
She ran to the child, who was lying face-up on the muddy path, his head resting in a rut where an inch of coffee-coloured water had collected. A sturdy-looking boy with blond curls and a cherubic face, he was wearing a nankeen jacket over a flannel nightshirt that reached to his ankles. His feet were encased in low top-boots with silver tassels, and a nightcap lay in the water beside his head. The top button of the jacket, which was in the second buttonhole, thereby throwing off the entire sequence, gave mute testimony to having been hastily fastened by inexperienced fingers. From the child’s size, she guessed him to be about three years old.
Alyssa was no novice to injury and illness. Her skill in treating both was widely respected in Northumberland. From her old Welsh nurse, she had learned a great deal about herb medicines and folk remedies that were often more effective than the leeches and bleeding that were inevitably the physician’s prescription, and many in the neighbourhood around Ormandy Park preferred Miss Eliot to a doctor when sickness struck them. Now she knelt in the mud beside the unconscious little boy.
The stranger dropped to his knee on the other side of the fallen child, saying, “Let me attend to him. You will ruin your skirt in the mud,”
“How can you think that I care about my skirt when this poor child is hurt?” she demanded indignantly, stripping off her leather riding-gloves.
Although she was reluctant to move the boy until she had ascertained what injuries he might have suffered, she slid her fingers into the muck beneath his blond head and eased it from the water in the rut. When she removed her hands after performing this task, they were dripping with mud. She looked about helplessly for something to wipe them on and was about to resort to the already soiled skirt of her riding-habit when her companion thrust, at her a spotless white handkerchief of the finest linen embroidered with the initial R.
She drew back at the thought of dirtying it, saying, “I could not use...”
“Don’t be silly,” he cut her off, seizing her right hand, then her left, in his and wiping the muck from them as though she were a recalcitrant child. Although his fingers were brisk and impersonal as they went about their task, his touch sent a frisson of excitement along her spine. By the time he finished with both her hands, the fine handkerchief was a muddy ruin. Meanwhile, Oliver’s young groom stood a few feet away, gaping at the strange tableau in motionless wonder.
Alyssa began to check the boy for injuries. There was no blood, nor could she see any other sign of a wound inflicted by the chestnut’s hooves. Moving expertly over his body, her hands searched for injuries.
Her companion, who was watching her actions intently, said musingly, “You seem to know what you are doing.”
“I am thought to be a tolerably good nurse,” she said coolly, without looking up from her task. Finally, unable to find any obvious injury on the little body, she told her companion so.
The man nodded. “I am convinced that he fainted from fright. Where are your smelling-salts?”
“I don’t carry any.”
Her companion said mockingly, “But what if you should faint?”
His tone, tinged with a sarcasm that bespoke his contempt for her sex, rankled her, and she said with asperity, “I have never fainted in my life, nor do I intend to.”
Amusement flickered in his gold-flecked eyes. “I admire a woman of resolve.”
The irony in his tone did not escape her, and she studied him for a moment with her frank, curious gaze. “I collect that you do not admire women at all.”
The hazel eyes widened in surprise. “No, I do not,” he admitted candidly, “although I must congratulate you on a remarkable piece of horsemanship in keeping your seat and your chestnut from annihilating this child.”
“I am thought to be a tolerably good horsewoman.”
“Your modesty is commendable. You are superb.” Alyssa found herself inordinately pleased by his compliment.
He asked, “Do you ride often here in the park?”
“Daily. And you?”
“Frequently, when I am in London,” he replied, removing Ms russet green riding-coat. It was so superbly cut and tailored that Alyssa knew only the incomparable Weston could have produced such a fine garment. Walking a few feet from the muddy path, he spread it on the wet grass.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, shocked by his careless treatment of such an expensive garment.
“I’m going to wrap the child in it.” As he spoke, he was undoing his neckcloth of starched white muslin that had been tied with superb style. “That light jacket is not warm enough for him. Even if it were, it is wet from the puddle of water he fell into. Lying like that on the cold damp ground will do him no good.”
Alyssa stared in dismay at the beautiful coat and then at the muddy child. “But it will be ruined,” she protested, “and it is far too costly and fine.”
“How can you think that I care about my coat when this poor child is hurt?” he said, teasingly repeating her earlier question.
Alyssa began unbuttoning her own jacket, which was inferior in fabric and tailoring to his.
“What the devil are you doing?” he demanded abruptly.
“We will use my jacket and spare your beautiful coat,” she said crisply.
He gave her an odd look that she could not decipher, and said irritably, “Do not be a shatterbrain. The morning is much too chilly for you to give it up.”
“But...”
“Do as I say,” he ordered in a voice that brooked no opposition. Clearly, he was a man who was used to issuing commands and having them obeyed.
“You are odiously commanding!” she retorted, rebuttoning her jacket.
He grinned, and the smile banished the harsh cynicism from his face, making him look almost boyish and causing Alyssa’s heart to skip a beat. Amusement became him.
“So I have been told,” he said cheerfully. “Your wardrobe will be the better for it, even if you are not properly grateful.”
Kneeling again beside the little boy, he lifted the limp little body from the muddy path and carried him to the coat. Before wrapping him in it, he dried the boy’s wet hair and wiped the worst of the mud from him, using his fine muslin neckcloth as a towel. When he finished, the muslin was as soiled as his linen handkerchief. Looking up at Alyssa with a smile so warm and full of laughter that her heart thumped wildly, he said in amusement, “I do hope that there are no more runaway children about the park this morning. I am running out of clothes.”
He removed the child’s wet nankeen jacket and gently wrapped him, still clad in his flannel nightgown and low top boots, in the warmth of the exquisite russet green coat.
Initially, Alyssa had been dismayed by her companion’s clear disdain for her sex, but now, having seen how carefully and gently he had handled the unconscious child, she found herself liking him more by the minute. “Where can he have come from?” she asked.
“His odd attire tells me he is a nursery escapee out for a morning fling.”
“What shall we do with him?”
The boy groaned, and his eyelids fluttered.
“He’s coming round,” her companion said. “I am hoping that when he regains his senses, we can prevail upon him to lead us to his home.”
Opening his eyes, the child looked blurrily up at them, trying to focus. When he could make out the two strangers kneeling over him, he began to sob in fright. Alyssa’s companion lifted him, still wrapped in the green coat, into his arms and comforted the crying boy with soft, soothing words until his panic subsided.
When the boy was quieted, the man, still holding him in his arms, asked softly, “What is your name?”
“Oo-ses.”
“Oo-ses,” Alyssa repeated blankly.
“Eustice,” translated her companion with a mischievous grin at Alyssa.
The child broke into a wide smile. “That’s right. Oo-ses.”
“Eustice, I am Richard.”
So that was what the embroidered R on the handkerchief stood for, Alyssa thought.
“Where do you live, Eustice?” Richard asked.
The boy’s face clouded. “It gone away.”
“Your home has gone away?” Richard asked.
Eustice nodded and, between increasingly loud and frequent sniffles, poured out a disjointed and at times not very intelligible story.
From it, however, his adult companions were able to glean that while his nursemaid had been occupied with his baby sister, he had slipped from his nursery, down the steps, and, in the light of dawn, out of the front door to the park across the street, where he loved to play. Only this morning, the fog had descended upon him. Disorientated by it, he had been unable to find his way back home. Worse, the park had been deserted, and Alyssa had been the first person he had seen. In his panic, he had dashed at her as she rode by and grabbed for her skirts.
“My 'ome ran away,” Eustice concluded, his sniffles becoming full-fledged tears.
“Eustice,” Richard told him gravely, “I thought you had more bottom than to cry over such a paltry thing as a runaway house. Don’t you know that, unlike horses, they never run far. We shall have no trouble finding it for you.”
The boy’s blue eyes, filled with tears, blinked. “Is you telling me a w’isker?”
“I don’t tell whiskers,” Richard denied, only the slightest twitching at the corner of his lips betraying his indignant tone. “Now describe your runaway home for me so that I shall know what to search for.”
Eustice started to comply when out of the swirling fog an apparition descended upon them, shrieking at the top of her very strong lungs. She was a thin stalk of a woman with a cap crazily askew upon uncombed straw-coloured hair that protruded out from under it at odd and recalcitrant angles. Wrapped in a shapeless old cloak, she carried a bundle shrouded in blankets in her arms. From the wild look in her eyes she appeared to be demented.
Eustice turned his face to Richard and said in a tone that was a mixture of childish disgust and mischief, “That’s my nursemaid, Pease. Let’s run away from her.”
“You’ve done quite enough running away already this morning,” Richard told him sternly.
Seeing Richard with Eustice in his arms, Pease screamed, “Help, kidnappers! Master Eustice is being kidnapped.”
As her shrill voice grew more loudly frantic, increasingly lusty wails rose from the bundle in her arms.
Trying to calm the woman, Alyssa said, “I assure you that this man is not a kidnapper.”
She might as well have saved her breath. The woman eyed her wildly and shrieked, “And you are his accomplice!”
“Woman, quiet yourself!” Richard commanded in a voice of such frigidity and authority that Pease’s shrieks died in her throat. “Do I look like a kidnapper?”
Alyssa smothered her laughter. Minus his stock and elegant jacket, his white shirt muddied from holding the dirty child, his thick, dark brows knit together in irritation, Alyssa thought that if not a kidnapper, certainly a buccaneer.
“No, sir,” whimpered the discomforted Pease, belatedly recognising aristocratic consequence, even though it came in a disreputable-looking package. Realising her error, she launched into an incoherent explanation made all the more unintelligible by the lusty laments from the bundle in her arms, but Alyssa caught some phrases: “baby teething... naughty Eustice... always running away... the death of me yet.”
Richard set Eustice upon the ground. Which was a mistake. The boy took advantage of his release to drop the russet green coat that had been wrapped around him into the mud and to flee as fast as his fat little legs could carry him across the wet grass, his nightshirt flapping above his top-boots.
“Come back!” the nursemaid shrieked, running after him after shoving her blanketed bundle at Oliver’s startled groom, who was standing like a gape-mouthed statue. The youth looked as though the nurse had thrust a savage beast into his arms and would have dropped the baby had Richard not had the quick presence of mind to snatch it from him.
“Good God,” he demanded of the groom, “have you never handled a baby before?”
“Nay, sir.”
The infant, clearly much frightened by the cavalier handling, was screaming in distress. Richard placed the squalling mite against his shoulder with a casual assurance that told Alyssa this was not the first time he had done so and comforted the baby with such skill that she soon stopped crying.
Alyssa watched with astonishment. None of the men of her acquaintance would have had the slightest idea of what to do with a baby, and she could not help being amused by the incongruous sight of this aristocratic man standing casually, without a trace of self-consciousness, in the middle of the park quieting an infant at his shoulder.
He replied carelessly, “The usual way: two of my own and a passel of younger brothers and sisters.”
A sudden sharp pain stabbed Alyssa’s heart as she realised that he was married. Why should you have supposed he was not? she asked herself furiously and decided that it had been his contempt for women that had misled her. She wondered whether his wife was responsible for his attitude toward women.
“You look surprised,” he commented.
“Most of the fathers of my acquaintance wish nothing to do with their squalling infants and have no more experience at handling them than that groom.”
“They miss a great deal,” he said quietly, looking across the grass toward Eustice.
The nursemaid had finally caught the runaway boy and was attempting to drag him back across the grass, but he had stubbornly dug in his heels and was resisting fiercely. Suddenly, he managed to break free from her grasp and turned to flee.
“Eustice, come here at once!” Richard called to him in a tone that demanded acquiescence.
The recalcitrant child, recognising the voice of implacable authority, turned back and ran obediently to Richard, Pease at his heels.
Richard gestured toward his horse. “Would you like to ride with me while we find your runaway home?”
Eustice jumped up and down with excitement. “Oh, yes!”
The man handed the baby to the nurse. The infant, who had been contentedly sucking her thumb while in his arms, began to cry again.
As Richard lifted Eustice into the big black’s saddle, Alyssa rescued his coat from the grass. The once spotless garment was wet and badly stained from the grass and mud. Its silk lining was soiled from contact with Eustice’s muddy form. She brushed vigorously at it, but it was beyond her ability to do much good.
“I fear your beautiful coat is ruined,” she said.
He shrugged as if it were of no consequence, took it from her, and mounted behind Eustice.
“Now, Pease,” he told the nurse who was trying in vain to quiet the crying baby, “if you will hand me the infant and be so good to lead the way, we shall take these children home.”
The Duke's Revenge Page 5