Sensations, emotions, on the other hand, he had in plenty. They swamped the inner voice trying to remind him who she was and what was right and what was wrong. He dragged his hands down over her perfect shoulders and down her straight back to the fine curve of her bottom. That felt good. Perfect. He pulled her hard against his groin. That was better.
But she gasped and broke the kiss and wriggled. The spell broke, and he had no choice but to ease his strangling grip. Though this made only the smallest distance between them, it was enough. The world came back and his powers of thought returned, and his brain demanded to know what he was about. Had he lost his mind at last? Was he dead drunk? Concussed?
It didn’t matter how much he wanted her. It didn’t matter if she haunted his dreams and wouldn’t let him sleep. It didn’t matter if she charmed and intrigued him and he hated Ashmont for being the first to stop watching from a distance.
Still, Ripley didn’t release her completely. If she’d pulled away more forcefully, he would have let her go—he hoped he would, at any rate—but she didn’t. She only stood in the circle of his arms, looking up at him, spectacles askew.
“All right,” she said, her voice thick. “Well.” She shook her head. “But no.” She pushed at him. Then he had no excuse not to let go. She stepped back, straightened her posture, straightened her dress, and adjusted her spectacles. “That was . . . educational.”
Educational. Oh, it most assuredly was.
She, an innocent. She, his best friend’s betrothed.
Ripley pushed away from the tree that had propped him up. He swore. He tore off his hat and hit the tree with it. He swore and swore until the space about him ought to have turned blue and the trees ought to have shriveled up. As it was, birds flew up from the branches and squirrels scolded and small, panicked creatures raced through the undergrowth.
“Ripley, for heaven’s sake!”
He heard her, but his mind shouted more loudly.
Ashmont was his best friend. Since boyhood, since those miserable early days at Eton. They’d always stood up for one another, the three of them.
And Ripley . . .
He kicked the tree—with his left foot, not the damaged one, though that was pure luck because he wasn’t thinking. But the jolt unbalanced him, and down he went.
Meanwhile at Camberley Place
“London?” Ashmont repeated.
He and Blackwood stood in Lady Charles Ancaster’s drawing room. Ashmont sported a black eye. Neither gentleman’s appearance was elegant. They appeared to have been run over by market wagons and, possibly, a herd of cattle.
“So it would seem,” her ladyship said. She held out the note Ripley had left for her.
Ashmont took it and read, “‘Gone to London. R.’” He turned the note over. The other side was blank. “That’s all?”
“He deemed it sufficient,” she said.
Blackwood and Ashmont nodded. They rarely explained themselves, either.
It did not occur to them that Lady Charles, too, might leave a great deal unsaid, including highly pertinent information.
“London,” Ashmont said. “We thought so, didn’t we? Gone back to London, we said. Wild-goose chase. But then all the clues, you know.”
“He did come here,” Blackwood said. “Didn’t go straight back to London. We weren’t wrong.”
“When you didn’t appear last evening, we all assumed you’d remained in Town,” Lady Charles said. “What a comedy of errors this has turned out to be.”
“Dash it, did he think we wouldn’t give chase?” Ashmont said. “Didn’t he mean for us to do it?”
“On the contrary, we had been expecting you,” Lady Charles said. “In fact, I should have thought you’d arrive before my nephew did or soon thereafter. His journey turned out more complicated than anticipated.”
“Ours, too,” Blackwood said, glancing at Ashmont. “We had an annoyance in Putney. Riot Act read. That sort of thing.”
“Indeed,” Lady Charles said. She put up her glass and studied his eye. “The bruise looks recent.”
“That happened after the . . . erm . . . misunderstanding,” Blackwood said. “He fell down some stairs.”
“Something I ate didn’t agree with me,” Ashmont said. “Sick all night, or I would have come, dash it.”
“Something you drank, most likely,” Lady Charles said crisply. “A fine start to wedded bliss this is. I had hoped that even you could get married without making a muddle of it. And to such an admirable girl, too.”
“I know she’s admirable,” Ashmont said. “Saw it at once. Wondered why I didn’t see it before. But wasn’t thinking of marrying before, you see.”
“Had you made your feelings clearer to her, she might not have run away,” her ladyship said.
Ashmont frowned. “Yes. Didn’t woo hard enough. So everybody tells me. But I did, you know. Told her all about the library, like Unc—that is, as I knew I ought—and she seemed pleased.”
“We’re not sure she did run, exactly,” Blackwood said. “We suspect it was Ripley’s joke.”
“Do you, indeed?” said Lady Charles. “It puzzles me why a clever girl like Olympia would have gone along with him.”
“That’s what her brother said.”
“Regardless of her motives, your behavior has not been calculated to please,” said her ladyship. “You were too busy fighting and drinking yourself sick to hurry after her and coax her back.”
“Extenuating circumstances,” Blackwood said.
Lady Charles’s expression chilled a degree further. “I shall not attempt to imagine what they were. I shall merely tell you that, in her place, I should have been greatly disappointed in my suitor.” She made a dismissive gesture. “Go to London. But do not be amazed if she tells you to look elsewhere for a duchess. Perhaps that’s for the best.”
“I won’t look elsewhere!” Ashmont said. “Whatever’s wrong, I’ll mend it. I said I’d marry her and I meant it. And I will. And Ripley may kiss my—my aunt.”
He made an angry bow and started away.
But he paused, and must have thought better of his behavior, because he turned back, looking sheepish. “Beg your pardon, Lady Charles. Please forgive me. That was . . . Didn’t mean to . . . Well, you know. Feelings.” He gave her his most angelic smile.
“I recommend you learn how to express your feelings in a more intelligent and agreeable manner,” she said. “Because if you don’t look out, someone who can do that will steal her away. If that happens, you won’t get her back.”
“Yes, Lady Charles. I’ll do better from now on.”
He took a proper leave of her this time, and walked to the door.
Blackwood started to follow, then paused and said, “And Alice, by the way? Is she about?”
“Oh, Ripley, what have you done?”
A brown, hairy face loomed over Ripley’s and a gigantic tongue approached. “Get off!” he pushed the dog away.
Ripley’s ears rang. His foot was demanding to be amputated. Rain dripped from the trees onto his face.
Lady Olympia sank to her knees beside him. Her lips were swollen and her hat and spectacles were crooked.
I hate me, he thought.
“Dash it, Olympia! Don’t kneel in the wet!”
“What about you?” she said. “It’ll be a miracle if you haven’t broken something.”
“Nothing’s broken,” he said. “I’m not made of glass. I’m not delicate, plague take it.” He raised himself onto his elbows. “Stop coddling me. You ought to punch me in the face. Do you see? Do you see what happens? This is why it’s against the rules for unmarried ladies to be alone with men. We can’t be trusted. Most of us, we get near an attractive female, and our minds fall straight into the gutter.”
She sat back on her haunches. She adjusted her spectacles.
“Attractive?” she said. “Are you serious?”
Olympia’s heart, which had not stopped pounding, now beat harder.
She st
ill hadn’t recovered from the kiss. She wasn’t sure she’d ever recover. She didn’t know a kiss could be like that. She wasn’t sure kiss was the correct word.
Then he’d taken a fit. And then . . . Attractive, he’d said. Meaning her.
“I told you last night,” he said. “Pretty and shapely. Did you forget?”
“No.” How could she? “But you’re a rake, and rakes are undiscriminating.”
“When I’m drunk, maybe I’m less discriminating,” he said. “I’m not drunk now, though I wish I were.”
“I’m pedantic and boring,” she said. “And I wear spectacles.”
“Do you think that makes the least difference to a man?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe in a crowded ballroom,” he said. “But when one is alone with a shapely, pretty girl, one doesn’t care about her spectacles—or anything else she’s wearing.” He tried to get up. Wincing, he raised himself to a sitting position. And swore.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Stay,” she said. “Let me get a servant to help you. It’ll be easier on your foot.”
He looked blank. “Servant,” he said.
“I realize my behavior yesterday might lead a person to believe I’m a henwit,” she said. “However, in the normal course of events, I am practical and sensible to a fault. I did not come to your rescue unaccompanied. I’ve brought the coachman, John, and the footman Tom, and we’ve come in your aunt’s landau.”
“Good of you,” he said. “More comfortable traveling to London in the carriage.”
“I daresay, but not today,” she said.
“Olympia, I have to get to London.”
“So you’ve said, more than once,” she said. “Let’s stop and think, shall we? Let’s look at this in a logical manner.”
He lay back, letting his bare head fall on the wet leaves and moss and whatever insects were making their way through the woodland debris. He gazed up through the trees at the gloomy heavens. Then he turned his green gaze to her. “Yes, let’s,” he said.
“It’s more than twenty miles to London,” she said. “Camberley Place lies scarcely a third of that distance from here. From where you lie, do the skies look promising of anything but more rain? In the circumstances, do you not agree that the practical thing to do is to return to Lady Charles, rest for a day or two, then go to London? In a carriage.”
He closed his eyes for a long moment. Then, “Right.” He sat up. “Mind ran amok for a moment. But of course. Obvious. I can hardly take the carriage and leave you here. Very well. Get Tom.” He grimaced. “You ought to have brought him with you in the first place.”
“I was trying to keep up with Cato,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about the servants.”
“Not thinking,” he said. “Lot of that going about. Ashmont shouldn’t have let you out of his sight for a moment. Asking for trouble. And surprise, surprise. Here we are.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“He’s my friend,” he said.
It dawned on her at last, as it should have done moments ago, that his post-kiss frenzy was all about male honor. A gentleman, even one of Their Dis-Graces, didn’t poach on his friend’s preserve. Women were property, and in the eyes of the world she still belonged to Ashmont.
For a moment—for the shattering moment of that kiss—she’d thought Ripley felt something for her. But it was simply the male urge to conquer women. His urge had got the better of him, that was all. He’d spoken the plain truth. There was a reason unwed ladies weren’t supposed to be alone with men.
She’d never believed a man would exercise his urges on her, but it had happened. Now she truly understood, not simply in her brain, why the rule existed. If she hadn’t been so startled to feel what she’d felt when he pulled her against him, and if she hadn’t somehow brought to mind Mama’s explanation of marital intimacy and what Olympia had seen that day with the horses, she would have been swept along in the storm of feelings. And ruined.
She almost giggled, it was so outlandish: Lady Olympia Hightower, debauched in a moment of passion. Then she almost wept, because the odds were so very good that this had been the only moment of passion she’d ever experience.
She told herself not to get hysterical—he seemed to be doing enough of that for the two of them—and said, “Calm down. Only think how you’ve broadened my education.”
“That’s Ashmont’s job!”
“Let us look on the bright side.”
“Bright side. Good God.”
“When he discovers I’m not completely ignorant, he’ll realize he’s had competition,” she said. “This, if I believe you and your aunt, will make him more eager to please me. He doesn’t need to know who’s responsible, and I shan’t tell him.” She made herself smile brightly. “Do you know, Ripley, I believe I owe you thanks.”
Lady Charles’s sermon had given Ashmont food for thought. Some matters, which had appeared clear enough at the adventure’s outset, had since grown murky. After briefly considering the problem, he realized what his trouble was: He was thirsty.
Accordingly, he and Blackwood stopped at the Talbot Inn. Had they not done this, they would have passed the landau on the road, going in the opposite direction. Had the roof of the landau not been put up against the rain, they would have seen their quarry, and their quarry would have seen them, and matters would have turned out altogether differently.
But that wasn’t what happened. What happened was, idly looking out of the window, they saw a somewhat elderly landau traveling in the direction from which they’d come. Blackwood made a jocular remark about the carriage’s sedate pace.
That was as much as they noticed because the rain started again, with a fury, and the view from the window became a blur. Turning away from it, Ashmont said, “What do you reckon? Ought I to storm the castle immediately when I get to London? Go straight to Gonerby House to win the lady fair and keep her won, this time? Lady C seemed to deplore my lack of derring-do.”
“After the lady fair has traveled four or five hours, and scarcely had time to catch her breath, let alone rest from the journey?” Blackwood said. “Not to mention, do you suppose you’ll make the best impression on her—you with the fresh stinker and wearing yesterday’s clothes and, in short, not looking as pretty as usual?”
Ashmont gingerly touched his bruised eye. “Probably not,” he said. “Tomorrow, then.”
Chapter 11
“You let them go,” Ripley said to his aunt. “They were here and you let them go.”
They’d entered the Great Hall moments ago and learned of Ashmont and Blackwood’s visit.
Ripley stood, bracing himself on the arm of a settee near the fireplace. He gazed up at the Elizabethan artifacts adorning the walls and wondered why the Fates had decided to torment him the instant he returned to England.
“You had better sit down,” Aunt Julia said. “You’re as white as a sheet.”
“Do sit down,” Olympia said. “Do try to be a trifle less stupidly obstinate.”
Ripley sank onto the settee. He wanted to lie down. And be unconscious. His leg pained him, but not half so much as the thoughts crashing about in his head. He wasn’t used to so much thinking. No wonder he felt so weary.
“I suspect you’ll recover more quickly if you make use of your uncle’s invalid chair,” his aunt said.
“An invalid chair! Why not feed me pap as well?”
“Invalid chairs have footboards,” Olympia said.
Ripley gazed up at the ceiling.
“To support the foot,” she went on.
Visions appeared in his mind of fat, gouty invalids, rolling about in their chairs at Bath. How many satirical prints like that had he seen? And laughed at?
“If you let the injured foot rest in that way, duke, it will get better much more quickly.”
“An invalid chair,” he said. Somebody shoot me now, he thought.
“How art the mighty fallen,” said his aunt.
He l
ooked at her. “Very well, gloat. I’ve fallen, more than once. I feel like the devil. Lady Olympia was right. You were right. I should never have set out today. I should have been here when Ashmont and Blackwood arrived.”
“But you weren’t,” said Aunt Julia. “And I acted as I deemed best. Perhaps I acted in anger, but it’s done.”
“Angry about what? Didn’t you agree with me that Ashmont would come for Olympia?”
“I was displeased with his attitude, not to mention his appearance,” his aunt said. “Neither was calculated to reassure an uneasy young lady. Instead, he seemed to be advertising his thoughtlessness, carelessness, and recklessness.”
“Oh, he doesn’t need to advertise,” Olympia said. “I had no illusions, I promise you.”
“You ought to have done,” Aunt Julia said. “You ought to have had at least a few hopes and dreams on your wedding day. More important, he ought not to take you for granted. It did not seem to me today as though he’d studied to please you. Yet by now he must have realized that your disappearance was not a prank or a joke, and he has fences to mend.”
“His Grace with the Angel Face must have looked very bad, indeed, to throw you into such a pother,” Ripley said.
Had he been here, he might have thrown Ashmont across the room. What the devil was wrong with the man, making such a poor show when he might so easily have made a good one? Was he trying to drive Olympia further away? Or was he so conceited he thought he was always irresistible?
“He looked and smelled bad and acted worse,” his aunt said. “I hauled him over the coals, and I hope I gave him something to think about. Most assuredly, he gave me something to think about. The pair of them did. I didn’t like running the risk of their meeting Lady Olympia on the road and her having to fend for herself with that pair of blockheads. But she is a young woman of strong intelligence and will. And I did reckon long odds against the encounter. It seemed to me far more probable those two rakehells would make a detour to a race or a boxing match or wait out the rain in a tavern.”