Blackwood reached down and yanked him up onto the saddle in front of him. Though the boy protested loudly, screaming about being kidnapped and murdered and such, he didn’t put up much of a fight.
Blackwood carried him away and Ashmont followed, and a lot of boys as well, shouting as they ran after them. But the horses picked up speed, and after a time the boys gave up. When he decided it was safe, Blackwood slowed and said, “Well played, Jonesy. Now show us the way.”
Something tickled Ripley’s nose.
He opened his eyes.
Flowers bobbed against his face in time to the chaise’s jolting.
They were attached to a hat. A lady’s hat.
He came abruptly awake to discover Ashmont’s future duchess in his arms. In spite of the jouncing chaise, she, too, had fallen asleep: deeply, judging by the steady rise and fall of her bosom.
Hardly surprising, he told himself, given the brandy, the day’s events, and the likelihood she hadn’t slept much the previous night, although for reasons altogether different from his.
Hardly surprising, either, for his arm to work itself around her shoulders. He’d been asleep, or dozing at the very least. A warm female body had settled close to his. Bringing it closer was instinctive.
Other instincts came into play now, and he was getting ideas in his head and elsewhere that would be all well and good in other circumstances. At present they were deuced inconvenient.
Still, he hated to wake her.
He remained as he was and looked out of the window. To keep his thoughts from wandering where they could only annoy him, he dragged into the front of his mind her curious System.
Instead of arranging books in the usual way—alphabetically or by size—she organized by subject, under broad headings like History, Philosophy, and Fine Arts. Within these broad categories were more specific ones. The last thing he remembered was her describing the difficulty of deciding whether one ought to break up into categories sets of books from a single collection, like that of Diane de Poitiers, for instance.
As he considered the pros and cons, bits and parts of a dream intruded: a woman falling off library steps into his arms . . . he, running madly through London streets, chasing a bridal dress that flew above his head like a kite . . . books tumbling out of windows as he ran.
His mind veering from books to dreams, he registered little of the view from the window until the chaise slowed and stopped. He blinked and took in the scene.
Richmond Bridge stretched ahead. They’d reached the tollgate.
His travel companion stirred, and tipped her head back to look at him. Her eyes widened and she jerked away.
“Too late to be shy now,” he said. “We’ve slept together.”
Olympia was sure she’d drooled on his neckcloth and developed sleep creases in her now-red face from pressing it into his lapel.
She had fallen asleep on one of Their Dis-Graces, and not the one she was supposed to marry. Furthermore, she had been far too comfortable tucked against his hard chest, with his muscled arm about her.
It was a very good thing no man had tried to lead her astray all these years, because it seemed as though she was all too likely to go.
She said, “I should not boast of it, if I were you. You’re hardly my first. Clarence would scream and scream during thunderstorms until he was allowed to crawl into bed with me.”
“Now I’ll know what to do the next time a thunderstorm strikes,” he said. “Your hat’s crooked.”
She turned to the window, but the scratched glass offered more of Richmond and less of her own reflection at present.
“I can’t see,” she said. She turned back to him. “Please straighten it. My aunt will be curious how I came to be dressed this way as it is. I’d prefer not to appear disheveled.”
“You’ll arrive with a dirty wedding dress and veil wrapped up in linen and a new large dog. I doubt she’ll fuss over a trifle like a crooked hat.”
“Aunt Delia is extremely fashionable,” she said. “She’ll fuss a great deal more about the crooked hat than anything else.”
He tugged the hat to one side. He stared at her face for a time, frowning, while she resisted the urge to look away, or shake him. Then he tried the other way. After repeating the procedure five times, he lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I don’t think it matters,” he said. “In any case, you can’t possibly look a fraction as disheveled and mad as you did in your wedding dress.”
The chaise passed through the tollgate. From this point on she’d have to pay attention. The postilion would need specific instructions to her aunt’s villa.
She relayed the directions through Ripley. They were simple enough, and the distance wasn’t great.
It was only after the chaise crossed the bridge that she remembered she hadn’t yet composed her explanation. She swore under her breath.
“Now what?” he said.
“That wasn’t meant to be heard,” she said.
“I have exceptionally keen hearing on occasion,” he said. “That is to say, when I’m paying attention. With you, a man must pay attention at all times. Had Ashmont paid sharper attention, for example, you wouldn’t have run away. Had I paid sharper attention, you wouldn’t have fallen out of the boat. But I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll keep you under close scrutiny until I’ve deposited you safely with your aunt.”
Ripley’s close scrutiny was a dangerous article. He’d said things and looked at her in ways other men didn’t, and the combination had started to make her think she wasn’t altogether the young woman she’d always believed she was. She knew rakes were dangerous but she hadn’t understood how subtle the danger could be. Her ideas about a great many subjects were threatening revolution. It was a good thing Aunt Delia was only a short distance away.
Yes, right. Focus on Aunt Delia. Not him.
“I don’t know what to tell her,” she said. “Nothing I compose sounds rational.” At present, her idea about being bought for breeding, which had appeared so compelling when she was drunk, now struck her as ludicrous. And in her drunken idiocy, she had prattled about the subject to Ripley, of all people!
“If I were you, I wouldn’t explain,” he said.
“No, you mean if I were you,” she said. “Men, especially of high rank, do as they please, and the rest of the world can like it or lump it.”
“You’re a woman of high rank,” he said. “You can do as you please.”
“Not unless I’m willing to sacrifice my reputation. Which I admit, I’ve already done.”
“That can be mended,” he said. “Do you know, I think it’s a good thing we’ve had a little time together because you are in dire want of schooling.”
“Indeed, what I desperately need is schooling in—in whatever it is you’re so expert in. How to be disreputable. Do you know, I believe even I can deduce how to do that.”
“I believe you’ve already embarked on that path,” he said. “Let us cast our minds over the last few hours, Lady Olympia, and—”
“I told you it was easy,” she said. “Even I can do it.” A little more time with him, and she’d be an expert.
“I wouldn’t dream of arguing,” he said. “Disreputability wants little effort and that little mainly pleasurable, which is one of its charms. But as to you—and if you would be so good as to let me say my little bit without interruption—”
“I wouldn’t dream of interrupting.”
“Thank you. If I may be more specific: The schooling you need is how to manage the world about you.”
“Let me explain something to you,” she said. “One’s income can be managed, although this seems to be a feat beyond my parents’ abilities. A library can be managed. The world cannot. Only a duke—and one of Their Dis-Graces—would suppose otherwise.”
He dismissed this with a wave. “Picture the scene. You appear at the door, trailed by me and the dog, who, by the way, is clearly not a Sam. Do give a moment to relieving the animal of
that ridiculous name. Offer him something with dignity. Like . . . Cato. Cato will do.”
“Thank you for letting me choose the dog’s name.”
“You were too slow,” he said. “Now listen to me.”
“Have I a choice?”
“I have experience with situations that seem to require explanations,” he said. “Besides which, I have a sister.” His gaze shifted to the front window. “And we don’t have much time.”
He ordered the postilion to stop the chaise. “Wait,” he said, and climbed out.
She saw an alternative to waiting: running away. But that hadn’t worked so well before, though it had felt so very good, and absolutely right, at the time.
Running away looked good to her now, when she was quite sober—a clear sign she’d spent far too much time with this man.
She waited and watched through the chaise’s front window.
He went to the boot. Cato looked up eagerly at him. Ripley made a beckoning gesture and the dog sprang out. Ripley removed the large linen parcel, sent the dog back to his blanketed nest, climbed back into the carriage with the wedding corpse, and told the postilion to go on. The chaise rumbled into motion.
Ripley took off his gloves and began untying the parcel.
“I’m not wearing that,” she said.
“I beg you will give me some credit,” he said. “A very little will do. We need it for the scene.”
“I like my aunt,” she said. “I won’t let you make her the butt of one of your practical jokes.”
“It isn’t a prank,” he said. “It’s a scene. A sort of dumb show-what-you-call-it.”
“I have no idea what you call it.”
“Like charades,” he said. “But the other thing.”
“A tableau?”
“That one. Wait.”
She watched him undo the parcel, his long fingers so adept and graceful. She remembered those fingers in her hair.
She turned her gaze away, and her obnoxious mind promptly conjured a scene. More than a year ago it had happened. Maybe two years or more: Lady Nunsthorpe’s ball. Known ironically as the Nun, according to Stephen, her ladyship clearly liked to live dangerously, for she’d invited all three of Their Dis-Graces. During their dance, his hostess had been doing her best to seduce Ripley—not that Olympia supposed this demanded much effort. But she hadn’t been able to look away. He’d moved with the power and grace of a thoroughbred, and she’d wondered what it felt like to dance with him.
The man standing in the basin had looked like a thoroughbred—splendidly proportioned, powerfully built. They could also be temperamental and dangerous, as her father had discovered at great expense.
Not that Papa ever learned from experience. She hoped she didn’t take after him in that regard. But she’d never been tested before. Never been tempted . . .
Ripley’s voice called her mind back from the treacherous place it was heading for.
“As I said before, you’ll appear on your aunt’s doorstep with your entourage,” he said. “This will comprise one canine and one disreputable duke, who will be carrying the wedding dress and veil.”
“Like a dead body,” she said. The corpse of her family’s hopes and dreams. The corpse of her brothers’ futures. She was growing hysterical. Stop it, she told herself.
“Exactly. As soon as you see your aunt, you will fall into her arms, weeping.”
It was simpler and cleverer than she’d expected. She could picture it easily. Presented with such a tableau, Aunt Delia wouldn’t expect a coherent explanation. She’d see at once what a muddle Olympia had got herself into.
But.
“I can’t weep on command,” she said.
“Think of something heartbreaking, like saying goodbye to me forever.”
If she had a sane segment of brain remaining, she’d jump up and down with delight and relief. Instead, she felt unhappy and panicky.
She looked at him. “It doesn’t seem to be working,” she said.
His black brows met over his nose. “How curious. That usually produces buckets of tears—until I produce the rubies or diamonds or whatever.”
“I told you this dress was a problem,” she said. “Because of it, you’ve confused me with one of your paramours. Weeping for jewelry is not, to my knowledge, the procedural method of a librarian.”
“Well, then, imagine a library on fire. Imagine your favorite library in flames, books curling up into black ash. Imagine it’s the library at Alexandria. Or . . . I know, the one belonging to what’s-her-name Potters—”
“Diane de Poitiers.”
“And not in flames but sailing across the ocean to the American President Jefferson, who’s bought every single volume.”
“He’s dead,” she said.
“Doesn’t signify. Picture the ship caught in a storm, and all those volumes sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Now I understand where the pranks come from,” she said. “Yours is a lively imagination.”
“It must be all the Shakespeare plays,” he said. “Yet here I am, killing books by the thousands, and you remain strangely unmoved.”
“My mind is analytical,” she said. “To a fault.”
“And to a point,” he said. “Then something gives way and you run amok. Fascinating.”
Had something given way? She had run amok. That much was indisputable. As to the rest . . .
“No one has ever called me that before,” she said.
“Amok?”
“Fascinating. But you didn’t mean I was fascinating. It was my errant behavior. When I reverted to my usual boring self, talking of my System, you fell asleep.”
“I was not the only one, I noticed.”
“I was tired,” she said.
“As was I,” he said. “Ashmont kept me up well past my bedtime.”
“I don’t see why you can’t admit you were bored, as everybody always is.”
“On the contrary, I was so excited, your books haunted my dreams,” he said. “But we’re running out of time. We need to solve the main problem. You need to sob on your aunt’s bosom. How about this: Imagine every valuable library in England sold to pay debts, and they’re all bought by Americans.” He opened his green eyes wide and made the kind of facial contortion actors did when feigning the throes of horror.
She swallowed laughter. Laughing would only encourage him and he’d already made himself more likable than was good for her.
“As long as the Americans take care of them,” she said. “They might do better, actually.”
“You had better think of a tragic scene in a book, then,” he said. “You do actually read the things, yes? Not merely sort and catalog and put large books next to small ones in an unsightly manner? Or fondle them as precious objects?”
“I will admit to a degree of fondling. But mainly those printed before 1550. In general, I read.”
“Then think of a sad scene. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to pin our hopes on your weeping with relief to be done with me when you throw yourself upon your aunt’s mercy.”
She suspected she wouldn’t feel relieved when he was gone. Two or three hours or however long she’d spent with him, in one vehicle or another, was the most time she’d ever spent in close proximity to any man who wasn’t a member of her immediate family. She was used to males, but not used to a Male, in the extreme sense he represented. He’d given her dangerous glimpses of a world forbidden to her.
There was no getting away from him and the atmosphere he created. He dominated the carriage’s interior. She was keenly aware of every place her body touched his. In a post chaise, not touching was impossible. But he touched her mind, as well, that private place, and threw everything in it out of the neat order she’d so painstakingly created.
The things she’d done this day, so not like her.
But then this whole day had not been like her.
He’d fought a man for insulting her. Which had never happened in all her life, be
cause men didn’t notice her enough to insult her. And she’d been so excited, so happy, she’d kissed him.
She hadn’t expected to get kissed back. She hadn’t expected anything. She hadn’t been thinking sensibly. Or at all.
But he’d kissed her back. Only more so, a great deal more so. On the mouth.
With only his lips he’d done things she didn’t know could be done, such as making her feel the kiss in twenty different parts of her body but most especially in the pit of her belly.
Ashmont had kissed her when she’d said yes, and she’d believed it quite a nice kiss. Now she realized it had been friendly. She wouldn’t have recognized this had she not experienced an alternative. What Ripley had done with his mouth wasn’t friendly. It was something altogether different and stronger. Much stronger and definitely indecent.
She wished it had never happened because now she knew something she hadn’t known before. And she wished it had gone on rather longer, because she’d hardly got a sense of what it was like and what she ought to do before it stopped.
Clearly, just being near him had corrupted her mind. Either that or prolonged spinsterhood had damaged it. Whatever the reason, the Olympia of recent hours was a person she hardly recognized.
She looked straight ahead. They were nearing the gatekeeper’s lodge.
The cowardly part of her wanted to leap from the carriage and run to the house. If she could get away from him and the heated atmosphere he created, she could clear her head.
But that was craven as well as silly. She couldn’t keep running away from difficulties.
Not to mention, she’d spoil the tableau.
His tableau. She, boring Lady Olympia Hightower was letting the Duke of Ripley fabricate one of his addlepated scenes, with her in the starring role.
But after all the time she’d had to prepare for meeting her aunt, after all her thinking about it, Olympia hadn’t produced a reasonable alternative or even an unreasonable one.
“Ah, here’s the gate,” Ripley said. “And here’s the gatekeeper, come to inspect us. I trust he knows you?”