He glared at his damaged foot. How many days would this cost him?
And how was he to get through them without losing his mind?
The following morning
“He can’t ride to London!” Olympia said. “He should not have come this far. He was not to put any weight on his foot. Everybody knew that!”
She had gone down to breakfast rather earlier than she was accustomed to, on account of being woken by a bad dream. In it, Ashmont had been pounding at the door, and Ripley and Cato had leapt through a window to knock him down. But while Ashmont and Ripley were fighting, Bullard had caught hold of the dog, and started whipping him.
Her conscience plaguing her about abandoning Cato in a strange place, she’d been unable to go back to sleep. Instead she’d made a quick breakfast before hurrying to the stables, where a groom informed her that His Grace had ridden out “a short while ago.” He was headed to London.
“I’m sorry, your ladyship, but we didn’t know His Grace wasn’t to go,” the groom said. “Even if we did, we’d have a job trying to stop His Grace doing what he wanted to do.”
“That reckless man! I don’t doubt he pulled off the bandages, as well. Not that they’d do much good if he meant to tramp about stables and ride to London. He would have been sorry, I promise, before an hour had passed. And by then it would be too late.”
She stroked Cato’s head and he licked her gloved hand. “Why didn’t you stop him?” she said. “It’s a pity I hadn’t time to train you to take the tail of his coat between your teeth. But no, he’s a grown man, and if he wishes to behave in a self-destructive manner, wiser persons or canines can’t stop him. We’ll go for a walk, Cato, and see what your manners are like. And we shan’t trouble our minds with the Duke of Ripley’s determination to cripple himself.”
This was the rational thing to do.
Let him go.
Deal instead with the dog who, bad manners or not, would be infinitely more manageable and far easier to train than a spoiled, reckless nobleman.
“Woof!” said Cato.
She looked down at the dog who returned her regard, eyes bright, tail up and wagging.
“Ah, but you are reputed to be a hunter, are you not?” she said. “Shall we see?”
To the groom she said, “I shall want a carriage.”
She explained what she wanted it for.
Then she took off, at a run, for the house.
Chapter 10
This was not a mistake, Ripley told himself.
Another day in Lady Olympia Hightower’s vicinity and he’d turn into a gibbering imbecile.
The way she’d looked at him when he said she was pretty and shapely . . . the way she’d colored and the light in her eyes. She’d gazed at him the way another woman would if he showered her with diamonds.
He’d told himself it was normal, enjoying her blushes. But it wasn’t normal for the recollection to follow him to bed and haunt him. It wasn’t normal to feel guilty and unhappy and angry with the world on account of a woman.
Celibacy couldn’t be that poisonous. Something more was going on, which he was not going to think about. He wasn’t going to think at all.
He was going to put her behind him and do what needed to be done. He was going to do the right thing, because he was the bloody knight in shining armor. For every-goddamn-body.
Including Ashmont, who couldn’t be sober for his own wedding, or pursue his own runaway bride, and was taking his own bloody time about finding them, though Ripley had done nothing to conceal himself, and half the world must have recognized him as he passed. Could one have left a clearer trail? Ought Ripley to have posted signs?
Meanwhile his ankle, which had seemed well enough this morning when he set out, had decided to make this morning more hellish than it already was.
Only two more miles or so to Cobham and the George Inn. He’d rest there.
No, he wouldn’t. After traveling what? Six, seven miles? He ought to have covered twice the distance by now, ankle or no ankle.
But he was so bloody tired. Sick and tired.
He hadn’t slept, thanks to her. The naughty dreams wouldn’t have been a problem. He had them all the time. But those weren’t the only kind. She’d appeared in her bridal rig, all virginal white, her face glowing, and he’d lifted her into his arms and carried her away from a furious Ashmont. In another, she’d appeared in the wedding that hadn’t happened, standing next to Ashmont but looking at Ripley through her veil, her eyes dark. He’d watched tears stream down her face, under the veil, until it was soaking wet, and her dress was wet, too. Then it was raining and they were on the boat and she fell into the river and it carried her away, out of reach, while he roared her name.
He’d awakened in a cold sweat.
After that he hadn’t wanted to try to go back to sleep.
He’d waited until the first hints of daybreak, and pulled on some of his uncle’s clothes. Why in blazes did Aunt Julia keep them? How was she to get better if she clung to . . . what she couldn’t have anymore.
Stop it, he told himself.
He’d got away undetected. That was what mattered.
Not long after leaving Camberley Place, he’d stopped at the Talbot in Ripley, his namesake town. There he’d nursed a tankard to make up for the breakfast he’d missed. He shouldn’t have stopped so soon or for so long. He’d wanted another tankard and another and he wanted to blame it on his peevish foot, but the fact was, he couldn’t seem to pull himself together.
He’d wanted to turn back. Still wanted to.
Which he couldn’t do. There was nothing for him there.
So here he was, plodding along at the kind of pace he supposed her Lord Mends preferred.
Why? Because her ladyship had taken so much pains with Ripley’s curst ankle. Desperate as he was to get to London, he couldn’t bring himself to undo her work. Not to mention, he couldn’t appear crippled and weak when he met up with Ashmont.
So more torture: Every time the plaguey ankle gave one of its obnoxious twinges, Ripley remembered Olympia’s hands on him, on his foot, and the businesslike way she’d looked after him, completely oblivious to his desperate state of arousal.
She was kind, Ashmont had said.
She had no idea what her brand of kindness did to men like them.
He glanced up. The sun, trying to break through leaden clouds, cast a sickly light. Oh, good. Just what he liked best: plodding along to London in a downpour.
Yes, you poor, sad martyr. Travel in the rain. As though you haven’t done it time and again, at high speed.
But then he’d been drunk. Now he was all too sober. He should have drunk those additional tankards.
How much would he need to drink to wash her out of his brain?
Not too late to find out. He could hire a post chaise at the George. Then he could travel at better speed. He could drink a tankard or three while the stablemen made the chaise ready. And take a bottle with him in the carriage. With somebody else driving, he could drink himself blind.
Only two more miles, or not much more.
He’d no sooner thought it than the world about him darkened. Above, the clouds churned, turning black around the edges. A droplet splashed on the horse’s head. He heard another strike his hat. His uncle’s hat, rather. Though vastly superior in quality to the one he’d bought in Putney, it fit only a degree better.
More raindrops fell, faster and faster, pattering on leaves and scattering the road’s dust.
Lovely.
Why the devil hadn’t he stayed in Florence for one more blasted day?
He wouldn’t be here now.
The wedding would have been a fait accompli.
Or not.
At any rate, the bride would have been somebody else’s problem.
And he would never know what he’d missed.
His mount, untroubled by the rain, plodded on.
Ripley told himself to plod on. A little wet wouldn’t kill him.
&n
bsp; The rain beat down harder, and poured off the rim of his hat down his neck. Demons dug their daggers into his ankle.
He peered out from under his hat brim into the downpour.
On the near side stretched a common. No shelter there. Not many yards ahead on the right, though, at the edge of a tangle of bushes, stood a wooded area. He made his way there, and found a narrow track. He turned into it and rode on a short distance into the cluster of trees. They grew thick enough to keep off the worst of the deluge.
There he waited.
And waited.
His ankle throbbed. He needed a drink. He needed to fight with somebody.
He dismounted, his ankle acting as though he was trying to murder it.
“Go to hell,” he told it. He found a stump and sat down, his leg outstretched.
You must keep it elevated, she’d said.
He remembered the way she’d held her nose and pretended to gag when she took off his shoe. He remembered the way she went after the bully.
He thought about her being married to Ashmont and felt sick.
He told himself not to think about it, but this time, he couldn’t make it go away.
An eternity later, the rain began to abate.
He looked up through the dripping trees. The sky was lightening.
The horse tossed its head. Something rustled in the bushes.
Ripley looked that way.
“Woof!”
Cato trotted toward him, tongue hanging out.
“Good boy!” called a familiar voice.
Behind Cato, striding along the muddy path, came Nemesis.
“You stupid man!”
Oh, he was, because the sound of her voice made the skies turn blue and the sun burst out in golden glory and, in short, he came perilously close to weeping with relief.
He dragged his stiff body up from the stump. Yes, he was deranged. Perhaps she’d made him so. Still, he had manners, of a sort, where relevant, and she, after all, was a lady. A gentleman rose when a lady appeared, no matter who she belonged to and how she plagued him.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he said.
“What does it look like?”
She wore what looked like one of Aunt Julia’s dresses: Narrow-sleeved and of a dismal shade of brown, it fit completely wrong. While she and his aunt were nearly the same height, their shapes were different. The waist hung some inches below where he estimated Lady Olympia’s navel to be, the shoulders didn’t follow the perfect slope of hers, and the bodice was in places her breasts weren’t. The hat, as somber as the dress, and topped by a single drooping feather, sat at a tipsy angle upon her head, the ribbons tied clumsily.
He felt as though he’d drunk exactly the right amount of fine champagne. He realized she’d made him feel that way from the moment she’d ordered him to help her with the window.
Making his expression surly, he glanced at the dog. “You hunted me down,” he said. “With the dog. You are a dangerous woman.”
She stood, hands on hips, eyeing him up and down. “Mad, perhaps, trying to save you from yourself. Sit, for heaven’s sake!”
Cato sat. Ripley did not.
“The masculine mind is truly a wonder,” she said. “Are you trying to cripple yourself? Have you any idea of the damage—the permanent damage—you might do?”
“No, I don’t, because there won’t be any. I’ve sprained parts before. I shouldn’t have let you coddle me. Those sailors you were talking about? You think they get to loaf about the ship in between cold seawater treatments?”
“You’re not a sailor. You’re a spoiled, self-indulgent nobleman. If you’re talking about recovering from boyhood injuries, remember that your boyhood passed a long time ago. Boys’ limbs are still growing. They mend quickly. You’re a grown man—all except the brain—and it’s different for you.”
“I’m not a fat old hypochondriac, either,” he said. “You seem to have confused me with your Lord Mends.”
She blinked once. “No, no, I can tell you apart easily,” she said. “My Lord Mends wears a wig. You have more hair than wit.”
“I never tried to pass myself off as a scholar,” he said. Mends was, though. A highly regarded one, the pompous ass. “Because I won’t meekly do what you think I ought, I’m brainless.”
He wanted to meekly do whatever she wanted him to do.
He needed to be shot. Preferably in the head, where it would do some good.
“Obstinate, too,” she said. “Go ahead. Lean on the horse. Or the tree. It’s killing you to stand upright—but you’ll do it, by Jupiter, won’t you, for no better reason than to prove whatever it is you have to prove.”
He wanted to lean on her.
“I have nothing to prove,” he said. “I had a plan, as I mentioned last night. I saw no reason to change it. I’m going to London.”
“Saw no reason,” she repeated, shaking her head. “How I wish I’d dosed you with laudanum.” She looked at Cato. “It’s exactly the same as talking to boys, which is like talking to a brick.”
She took a deep breath, and let it out, which created mesmerizing movement in the bodice. He knew better than to tell himself not to look. He was a glutton for punishment.
Turning from Cato to Ripley she said, “I know it’s a waste of breath, but both Reason and Conscience demand I point out a few simple pieces of common sense: One doesn’t put weight on an injured limb. One keeps it elevated. One gives it time to recover.”
“It had plenty of time,” he said.
The calming breath hadn’t worked, apparently, because her eyes flashed and her cheeks pinkened, and she cried, “Ten hours isn’t time enough, you brick-brain!” She waved her fists in the air, and the motion made the dress go one way and her breasts another. “And hours riding about the countryside don’t count, you great ox!”
She was delicious.
He hated Ashmont. Also himself.
It was long past time to make his exit.
“If you’re quite done with the sermon, I’ll be on my way,” he said. He turned away to collect the reins.
“Go,” she said. “Have it your way. I must have experienced a temporary derangement, thinking Reason and Conscience carried any weight with you. You’re impossible, the lot of you. Hell-bent on self-destruction. I ought to know better, but no, I must come out on this wretched day to rescue you from your folly, because you did what you could to rescue me from mine. Rescue you—any of you—what a laugh. Well, it’s but one more error of judgment. I apologize for interrupting your journey.”
He heard a furious rustle of skirts and petticoats. He knew he ought to ignore it and get on the horse and get himself far away. But he’d always had a problem with oughts. He turned in time to see her start away, head up, back ramrod straight. That back. The hint of impatience in her walk. More than a hint at present.
What a cur he was.
She’d looked after him. She’d done what she could to help him heal. And he—well, he was what he was. He couldn’t change his character and he couldn’t change the past. He couldn’t make it come out that he’d been the one in front of the Clarendon Hotel that day.
“Dammit, Olympia.” He limped after her.
She marched on. “I don’t care what you do. You’ll go lame. You’ll never dance again. It’s nothing to me.”
“I can’t stay there—at my aunt’s!” he said to her back. “You don’t understand. You’ll never understand. I don’t want you to understand.”
That made no sense and he didn’t care.
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t want to understand. It doesn’t signify at all to me what you do. But I thank you for the lesson.” She turned toward him in a storm of swooshing skirts. “If I get another chance with Ashmont, I’ll know better than to take any notice of anything he does. I shall live a life of the mind, which is more than acceptable and worlds less aggravating than trying to communicate with any of you.”
He grasped her arm. He was vaguely aw
are of Cato growling, but that was merely background noise to the foreground cacophony in his head. “I have to go away because—”
“I don’t care.”
“Because,” he said.
Because there she was, irate and smelling of rain and woodland and fresh things, her arm warm under his hand. She’d kept him up all night, and the too-brief taste of her still haunted him. He was a reckless blockhead, but that was who he was. And here she was. And they were alone. And he wanted.
That was as much as he knew, really, as he pulled her into his arms, muttering, “Because this.”
He kissed her. And at the first touch of his lips to hers, the desire he’d been battling for what felt like eons won.
He kissed her in the way of a man who wants what he can’t have and has to have it anyway, the way of a man who knows only when he’s got it and needs to know nothing else. And with the first taste and feel of her mouth and the way her body felt, crushed to his, all the feelings that had been crashing this way and that, all wrong, turned right.
And when she grasped his shoulders and held on, something inside him, some taut part of himself, which seemed to have been waiting eternally, surrendered.
He cupped the back of her head, and kissed her more urgently, persuading. Stay, he urged with his mouth. With a sound like a sigh, she gave way, and the world tilted right again. Her lips parted to him and her body melted against his, and the warmth of it and the wave of turbulent pleasure made him stagger, his bad leg wobbling dangerously.
He didn’t care about his foot or about pain or anything but her. He held her, and drank in the taste and feel of her as he sank backward, falling, until his back struck something hard and rough.
Up or down, it didn’t matter, because this was what mattered: the shape of her and the way she fit against him and the wondrous rush of feeling. And above all the power of a kiss, ever-deepening as she followed his lead.
Ah, she did that well. She learned quickly, and demanded in the same way he did, until the first, pleasurable warmth swelled into a dark heat, burning up what little reasoning power remained in his brain.