A Duke in Shining Armor

  All he had to do was get her safely to Twickenham. By water it would take two or three hours. The journey by land was shorter in terms of distance, but clogged roads could make it slower.

  “There’s Battersea Church,” she said. “Everything looks so different from this vantage point. I’ve only ever traveled the river in a steamboat or a yacht, never so close to the water as this.”

  As though her words had summoned it, a steamboat chugged by, churning up the waters. As he reached to steady her, the wash rocked the boat violently, and he nearly fell over. With a curse, he righted himself and grabbed her arm, which shrank at his touch—but no, that wasn’t her arm. It was the puff inside her sleeve.

  She didn’t seem to notice. She was clutching the side of the boat. Her face was as white as the bridal dress.

  By the time the wherry settled again, he’d got his breathing more or less even, though his heart pounded. If she’d fallen overboard . . .

  But she hadn’t. Nobody had.

  “At least this won’t be a boring river journey,” he said.

  “It’s very different when one is low in the water,” she said shakily.

  “Don’t sit so close to the edge,” he said. “And do not get seasick.”

  She looked up at him. Her eyes seemed to have lost their color and turned grey, like the mist. “Now why has no one else ever thought of that? Simply commanding one not to be seasick. I’m sure it always works.”

  She spoke calmly, but she kept her hands fastened to the side of the boat.

  “I’ve made a decision,” he said. “I did wonder what Ashmont was about. But now it’s clear he had the good fortune to find exactly what he needs.”

  The color washed back into her face. “I don’t care whether I’m what he needs. The question is whether he’s what I need.”

  “He’s a duke,” he said. “That’s all any woman needs.”

  One by one she loosened her fingers from the side of the boat. “I have told myself that at least a hundred times,” she said. “How curious that it failed to quiet my trepidation.”

  “A pity you didn’t drink more brandy,” he said. “That might have done it. You got only as far as the reckless phase. A little more, and you might have reached the malleable and contented phase. Which reminds me: As to the casting-up-your-accounts phase—”

  “I didn’t know there were rules of intoxication,” she said.

  “Then listen to the voice of experience. If you mean to be sick in spite of my firm command, kindly do it over the side, but hold on. If you fall in, you’ll drown in that rig, and I’ll have a lot of boring explaining to do, instead of my simple yet cunning plan for salvaging this situation.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “I’ve had several. One involved a detour to Portsmouth and a sea voyage.”

  “Ah, the clever running-away ruse,” she said.

  “I considered and discarded it,” he said. “I’ve hardly come back. I haven’t had time to recover from foreigners.”

  “I should like to meet some foreigners,” she said. “I should like to meet nothing but foreigners.”

  “Then marry Ashmont and make him take you abroad,” he said. He could picture her climbing the steps of the Boboli Gardens in Florence and looking out over the city. He wondered what color her eyes would turn when they first lit upon the palazzi overlooking Venice’s canals. He could see her in a gondola, in the intimacy of an elegant, well-cushioned felze . . . and it was better not to imagine the sorts of things one could get up to in those tiny cabins.

  “I’ve already thought of that,” she said. “I’ve reviewed the advantages. Repeatedly. The library at his place in Nottinghamshire, I will admit, loomed large in my calculations. And in case I had overlooked any, Aunt Lavinia was more than happy to fill in the gaps. I should have everything I ever wanted, she said—though I would say it depends on what one wants. Not that I understand how he’s managed not to be up to his ears in mortgages and debts. But you may be sure that Papa and Uncle Henry looked into those matters very closely. That is, Uncle Henry did. I don’t believe Papa truly understands numbers, unless they’re in the racing forms.” She sighed. “Ashmont hasn’t run through his inheritance. He’s increased it.” She put her hand to her head. “The world will think I’m deranged.”

  The world, if Ripley knew anything about it, would blame Ashmont. Hell, Ripley blamed Ashmont. He was a rich, beautiful duke. He’d been born charming, where others had to learn it the best they could. He ought to have swept her off her feet. She ought to have been dizzy with joy on her wedding day, not drowning her troubles in brandy.

  Idiot.

  “Second thoughts?” he said. “We can be back to Newland House in a jiffy.”

  “No, I have crossed the Rubicon. And look how far we’ve come.” She pointed an unsteady finger. “There’s Putney Bridge. I’d know it anywhere.”

  “Yes, there’s quite a good—” He broke off. He’d been gone for more than a year. “Any earthquakes hereabouts lately?” he asked the watermen.

  “No, Yer Grace,” said one, while the other only stared at him.

  “In that case, may one presume the White Lion at Putney still stands?” Ripley said.

  “Still there, Yer Grace,” the more talkative one said.

  “We’ll stop and eat at the White Lion,” Ripley said. It would require their going into the High Street and would take longer than a riverside tavern, but one didn’t take ladies to taverns.

  Both men nodded, and began to redirect the boat toward the Putney side of the river.

  “Stop?” she said. “We don’t have time for you to corrupt innocent inn maids. I thought you were in a hurry to be rid of me.”

  “You can’t expect me to travel with you all the way to Twickenham on an empty stomach,” he said.

  “Can I leave you here and continue on my own?” she said. “Because I’m not in the mood to corrupt innocent innkeepers today, and I should want something to do while you dally with serving maids.”

  “We’re going to have something to eat,” he said. “You and I. Or you can watch me eat.”

  “I thought you were in a hurry.”

  “It isn’t dinner at Windsor Castle,” he said. “We’ll need no more time than what the mail coach gives passengers for dinner. You’d better eat. Less likely to get a headache that way. Voice of experience, remember?”

  Olympia couldn’t remember when last she’d eaten. She couldn’t remember a number of things. A great many articles were not in their usual places in her mind, and the world about her wasn’t in its right place, either.

  The duke hadn’t made a wrong suggestion, she supposed. If the body wasn’t nourished, the brain became weak. Furthermore—though she wouldn’t admit it to him for worlds or diamond coronets—she believed she was somewhat intoxicated. That was the only reasonable explanation for the jumble of her mind.

  Hers was supposed to be an orderly, practical mind. To a fault, some said. Well, everybody.

  The one she had at present was chaotic and impractical.

  She needed to eat. It wouldn’t take long. They would be on their way, nourished and refreshed, and she would be able to think to the next step and beyond.

  “I should like a sandwich,” she said. “Do they have sandwiches?”

  “I’m a duke,” he said.

  “Yes, of course they have sandwiches,” she said. If they didn’t, they’d obtain them one way or another. It was good to be a duke, especially a large, intimidating one.

  Not that she was intimidated. He was one of Their Dis-Graces and therefore rather an idiot. But he was a powerful idiot. And a man. And even on a boat meant for several passengers, he seemed to occupy all available space. He sat with his long legs stretched out, as though he lazed on a sofa in a Turkish harem. Her mind made a picture of him in a loose shirt and flowing trousers . . . then it drifted to what Mama had told her about the wedding night.

  This was by no means a shocking revelation. Olympia had sn
eaked away with certain of her brothers one time, and watched a stallion mount a mare. It had seemed rather uncomfortable for the mare, and work for the stallion, but of course it would be different for people . . .

  . . . and she did not want to think about such things when in proximity to this large, and not entirely civilized, man . . . or at all . . . and really, she was quite hungry.

  The watermen pulled into the landing place. She watched impatiently as they stowed the oars. She would have leapt from the boat then, but Ripley grasped her elbow. Not hard. He didn’t apply pressure. All the same, the light grasp kept her on the seat.

  She wasn’t sure how he did it but she suspected it had something to do with being a duke.

  “Wait,” he said. “Let them get out and hold the boat.”

  She waited, acutely conscious of the big hand clasping her lower arm, while the watermen took their time about disembarking, then more time to turn around and take hold of the narrow end of the boat to steady it.

  “All right,” Ripley said, releasing her. “Careful now.”

  “The boat is on dry land,” she said. “Or damp land, to be precise.”

  “Not all of it,” he said. “To be precise. The prow—”

  “Yes, yes, I see.” Hurriedly she collected her veil and rose. As she stepped toward the front of the boat, it rocked.

  “Careful,” Ripley said.

  She turned back to him. “I can’t stop the vessel from rocking,” she said. “As you said, part of it is in the water, and water, being liquid—”

  “Stay in the middle,” he said.

  “I am in the middle.”

  With a huff of exasperation, she turned away and started toward the front of the boat at the same moment he said, “No!”

  The boat rocked jerkily. Then she was waving her arms for balance and Ripley was moving toward her, shouting. And there was his hand, which she tried to grasp, but it was a hairsbreadth out of reach. Then she was falling, and over she went, with a great, muddy splash.

  He swore and swore again.

  He climbed out of the boat, shoving away the watermen, who were moving toward her. He trudged into the muck to where she sat, looking very surprised, in a foot or so of murky water.

  “You had to fall off the boat,” he said.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose!” She tried to rise, but only contrived to slide backward into slightly deeper muck.

  “I told you—”

  “You shouldn’t have distracted me.”

  “I was warning you.”

  “It is extremely annoying to be talked to as though one had no sense at all. No, don’t trouble yourself,” she added as he put out a hand for her to grab. “I am perfectly capable of climbing out of a foot of water unaided.”

  An audience was gathering. In another minute, gawkers would be pouring out of the riverside taverns.

  “Take my hand,” he said.

  “I can take hold of the boat,” she said.

  He grabbed her hand, and started to pull her up, but she jerked free at the same moment, and his foot slipped, and down he went.

  He heard laughter from the shore.

  He looked at her.

  She still had the curst veil tangled about one arm, and the hair arrangement he’d made was slipping downward. The fall had splashed muddy water on her face and spectacles. The latter were definitely crooked now.

  He felt laughter welling, but then he realized he was sitting in water, and so was she, and she’d catch a lung fever if not worse.

  He swore again and pulled himself up out of the water, set his feet solidly, and bent. He grasped her under the arms—how many times was that today?—and hauled her upright. The instant she was vertical, she tried to push him away, and stumbled toward the water again.

  This time he pulled her hard against him. “Are you trying to drown yourself?” he said. “Because it would be wiser and certainly easier to jump off the bridge—in the middle of the river, you see, not at the shore.”

  She pushed at him. “Will you please get out of my way!”

  She was wet and muddy and aromatic of river. He was aware of this. He was aware also of a supple, curving body pressed against his. His mind began to do what a man’s mind does in such cases: It yielded to a stronger power, rather lower in the body.

  “No,” he said. With speech, even as little as that, a modicum of survival skill returned, and his mind produced an image of Ashmont waiting with the clergyman.

  Ashmont’s bride.

  He’d chosen her and he deserved her. She was perfect for him.

  While she was still pushing, Ripley shifted his weight and swung her up and into his arms, a wet, muddy mass of shrieking runaway bride.

  The onlookers cheered. He was used to audiences. He nodded at them.

  “Oh,” she said. “You are ridiculous.”

  “Says the girl who landed on her arse in the river a moment ago.”

  She wasn’t one of those so-called sylphs, who weighed nothing and looked as though a mild breeze would fracture them. She was a proper-sized female, with an excellent distribution of feminine assets. But he’d managed runaway horses and he’d hauled larger and far heavier friends out of taverns, brothels, boats, carriages, stables, and so forth. Furthermore, he was a man more physical than intellectual. It was no great feat to carry her up the mild incline and on into the High Street.

  She talked or scolded or something the whole time.

  He didn’t know what she said because he didn’t pay attention. He had to keep his mind from dwelling on what she weighed and what she was shaped like, because from there matters would proceed to his getting ideas in the tiny little head that liked to take charge when women were in close proximity.

  He concentrated on the one thing he had to do.

  He had to get her to Twickenham—alive, preferably—and make Ashmont go there and get her.

  It couldn’t be simpler, Ripley assured himself.

  Chapter 4

  As Olympia might have expected, everybody at the White Lion recognized the Duke of Ripley.

  They would have recognized any of Their Dis-Graces.

  Their images had been engraved in all the papers featuring gossip. They had appeared almost daily in London’s favorite purveyor of scandal, Foxe’s Morning Spectacle, and in caricatures in print shop windows.

  There was no such thing, Olympia realized, as traveling discreetly with him.

  Not that one could be discreet, wearing a ruined wedding dress and looking less like Ophelia and more like a drowned rat or the shipwreck the rat wasn’t quick enough to escape.

  There was no such thing, either, she thought, as getting His Grace to do anything other than what he wanted to do. In the matter of being allowed to stand on her own feet, for instance, she was obliged to wait until he was good and ready.

  The truth was, she wasn’t completely unhappy to be lifted out of the water and carried up the stairs past what seemed like hundreds of onlookers. While she would have held her head high—she was an earl’s daughter, after all—she wasn’t at all confident of being able to walk with anything like grace.

  And while she’d rather not be quite so wet and muddy in a public hostelry, above all she did not want anybody to know she was drunk. That, she feared, was what the audience was bound to conclude if she attempted to walk on her own, dragging what felt like several tons of the Thames with her.

  This was the first time since she was a little girl that a man had carried her in his arms. She didn’t feel like a child, and it was nothing like being carried by one’s father or uncle or grandfather. Awareness of his strength and size and the warmth of his body hammered at her senses. She wanted so badly to tuck her head into his chest.

  It was the brandy, had to be. You’d think that having steamboat wash nearly overturn one into the Thames was enough to shock one back to sobriety. Apparently not.

  He finally put her down in the hotel’s reception hall. Her legs trembling for no sensible reason, she lis
tened while he demanded of the innkeeper two rooms, both with fires and hot water for washing, and dry clothes.

  It took her mind a moment to settle down and make sense of what was going on.

  Then, “Fires?” she said after the innkeeper had hurried away. “At this time of year?”

  “Are you keen to develop a lung fever?” he said.

  “By the time they get them going, we’ll have washed and changed,” she said. “That is, if they find clothes. How do you expect them to find clothes for us?”

  “The same way I expect them to make up fires,” he said. “How they do it is not my concern.”

  “I wonder nobody’s tried to kill you before now,” she said. “Do you do this sort of thing all the time?”

  “No,” he said. “You’re the first bride who’s kidnapped me. Naturally, though, they assume I made off with you, which suits our purposes.”

  “It doesn’t suit mine,” she said. “I can’t—” She had been about to say I can’t afford to be made off with, but that was absurd. To all intents and purposes she’d run away with the Duke of Ripley, and that was what the scandalmongers would say and the papers would publish, and there would be satirical prints of the event, drawn from the artists’ imaginations. These would be lurid.

  She told herself to look on the bright side. Never in her wildest fantasies had she ever imagined appearing in the print shop windows.

  Never in anybody else’s wildest fantasies, either. To her knowledge, nobody had ever been voted Most Boring Girl of the Season more times than Lady Olympia Hightower.

  On the other hand, she’d embarrassed her family. Disgraced them. Disgraced herself. Made herself truly unmarriageable.

  But no, she could not think about consequences or she’d go mad. As it was, her mind was on shaky ground.

  One thing at a time.

  A maidservant appeared to show them to their rooms.

  Ripley followed Lady Olympia up the stairs, telling himself the bride-overboard scene was the sort of thing a fellow could expect to happen in the course of an adventure. Not that it was the sort of entertainment he’d expect to have with a respectable girl—but then, he hadn’t had much experience with that type.