“I see we’ve reached the crosspatch stage.”
That was putting it mildly.
“Is it at all possible, duke, or do I ask too much, for Your Grace to attempt to be a little—only a fraction of a fraction—less provoking?”
“Far too much,” he said. “What do you think?” He made a sweeping gesture over his attire, which sharpened the image she couldn’t banish from her mind, of what he looked like without any clothes on.
Studying him wasn’t good for her, she was sure. She’d done it all too zealously a little while ago, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever recover.
Eating seemed to have restored her to sobriety, though she couldn’t be certain, not having a basis for comparison. With a somewhat clearer head, she felt even more strongly aware of the sheer physical-ness of him.
The stallion came into her mind, the one she’d watched cover the mare that time.
Stop it, stop it.
Be sensible, she told herself. Look at the facts. The simple fact was, it was hard to distance oneself from the physicality of a man when one sat looking up at him.
She lowered her gaze and from under her lashes surveyed him from head to toe: from the big shoulders stretching the black coat’s seams, down over the pleated shirt and striped waistcoat, and down, quickly, over the white trousers to the scuffed black shoes. He carried a hat in his right hand.
She stared at the hat and tried to occupy her overactive mind with remembering the names of men’s hats and trying to identify this one.
“Naturally it doesn’t fit,” he said. “Out of the question, given time constraints, though the tailor did the best he could. It’s by no means the wool I would have chosen, and the linen is of mediocre quality.”
She tried to pretend he was a shop mannequin. A strangely dressed one. “It’s unexceptionable,” she said. “I agree that nothing fits properly, but at least the trousers cover your ankles. And as long as you don’t have to heave women in and out of boats or rivers, the coat seams should hold.”
“But the pièce de résistance,” he said. He approached, and the other women retreated.
He stopped at the horse dressing glass and set the hat on his head. He frowned and tilted it this way, then that, then tried it straight.
“Vile,” he said. “I look like a bank clerk. But it was the only one that came close to fitting. How the devil do fellows buy these things ready-made?”
“You do not look like a bank clerk,” she said. “If you wore a bargeman’s cap you would not look like a bargeman. You look like a nobleman . . .” She thought. “In disguise. Not a very good disguise, admittedly.” She gave a dismissive wave. “You’ll do. You can wear anything and you’ll remain tall, dark, and handsome—”
“Hand—”
“Men are deemed attractive when they’re middle-aged and paunchy,” she went on. “Men may go grey and sag with impunity. We women are allowed to look well until about age twenty at most. After that, we’re crones.”
The women about her protested.
“The lady is out of sorts,” Ripley told them. “You’ve done a fine job. Her ladyship doesn’t look nearly as crone-like as usual. Now, if you would all quit dawdling with the hair, we really must be away. Her ladyship is on fire to be off.”
She was. The question was, Where to?
“Yes,” she said.
Handsome.
No one had ever accused Ripley of that before.
She must still be drunk. Not being used to drinking, she didn’t get over it as quickly as a more experienced person. Furthermore, she was a gentlewoman, a maiden.
But the way she’d surveyed Ripley from under her lashes was not what one expected from innocent maidens. Who knew that a virginal bluestocking could employ a half-hidden gaze like that, or cause a man to simmer under it. Apparently, he had something to learn about bluestocking virgins.
He hadn’t long to simmer. She turned her head slightly, and the firelight glinted off her spectacles, and then he couldn’t see her eyes at all.
Not that he needed to, he told himself.
She’d seen quite enough of him and he didn’t need to see anything more of her. Best not to, in present circumstances. Thanks to his monk-like existence of recent months, he was all too quick to heat.
He’d cure the ailment this very evening. As soon as he returned bride to bridegroom.
Along with the usual improper thoughts natural to a nonvirtuous male, this was what passed through his mind as he waited, foot tapping, for the women to place a hat on Lady Olympia’s head and tie the ribbons just so. When the hat ritual ended at last, and the bridal garments had been wrapped up in linen, he hustled her out of the room and, eventually, out of the hotel and into the inn yard where a post chaise waited.
“A post chaise!” she said.
“Did you think I’d buy a ticket for a mail coach?” he said. “At this hour?”
“Will it take us to Twickenham?” she said.
Ripley folded his arms, tipped his head to one side, and gazed at her. In the murky afternoon light, his eyes had darkened to the green of a cedar forest.
Olympia straightened her spectacles and put up her chin. “I’ve decided you made a telling point.”
His green eyes narrowed.
“About going back with my tail between my legs,” she said. “I am not a coward.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said. “Undecided, possibly.”
“I admit I was not thinking clearly,” she said. “All the same, one might make a case for heeding one’s instincts. I should like to speak to Aunt Delia before I return—if I return. I believe she’s the one best equipped to counsel me. Everybody else sees nothing but the headline, Olympia, Married At Last, To A Duke. I will tell you frankly the headline hung in my mind, too, to the detriment of clear thinking.” She looked away.
So much had clouded her thinking. Her brothers’ future. Her own.
Ashmont, too. Nobody had ever courted her so ardently. In fact, nobody had ever courted her at all, unless one counted Lord Mends’s talking endlessly about his books. When Ashmont directed that earnest blue gaze at one, as though he saw nobody else in the world, and intensified the effect by casually mentioning his grandfather’s vast collection of books, which she knew could easily compare with those of the Dukes of Roxburghe and Marlborough—well, it was impossible to keep a cool head.
As was not the case with Lord Mends, Olympia had seen for herself the duke’s library at his place in Nottinghamshire. Her father had taken her with him to look at some horses. Ashmont had been away at school at the time. It was his uncle and guardian, Lord Frederick Beckingham, who’d kindly offered little Olympia—she couldn’t have been more than twelve—a tour of the house. Once she’d seen the library, she wasn’t interested in the rest of the house, much to the gentlemen’s amusement.
“Twickenham,” Ripley said, bringing her back to the present.
“Yes,” she said.
He was silent for an exceedingly long time. She clenched her hands—not that she had a prayer of winning any fight with him—but as a signal she was prepared to fight, though she knew she’d been more than a little wayward.
She’d better not drink brandy, ever again.
“Very well,” he said. “Get in the carriage.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding and started toward the vehicle.
The postilion had put down the step and opened the door when a yelp of pain, then another, echoed through the courtyard.
Turning toward the sound, Olympia saw, near the yard’s entrance, a wiry, red-faced man raise his whip at a cowering dog, a fine, brindled wolfhound or something like.
A red mist appeared before her eyes.
She forgot about Ripley. She forgot about Twickenham. She was moving before she thought about moving, marching briskly toward the scene, speaking as she bore down on her prey, her finger pointing at him, then down at the ground. “You. Drop it. Now.”
The villain froze. The dog san
k onto its belly.
For a moment Ripley froze, too, dumbfounded.
“Now,” said her ladyship. She was moving toward the whip-wielding fellow, not running, but moving swiftly and inexorably, like—like Ripley didn’t know what. Something inexorable, as implacable as Fate. Which was absurd. She, in a hat with flowers springing up from the top, and a black lace cape fluttering about her shoulders, and ribbons streaming as she sailed along. A pastry confection, perhaps. Nemesis, hardly.
Yet every man in the courtyard paused at the tone of her voice. All of them, Ripley included, responded to that sound. It was simply the Voice of Command, though he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard a woman employ it so effectively. His sister, perhaps. Or Aunt Julia.
Though the object of her displeasure looked as obstinate and belligerent as every other undersized blackleg and bully Ripley had ever known, and seemed to be drunk as well, the fellow brought his arm down. Otherwise, he didn’t move, only stood, warily watching her ladyship’s approach.
“I’ll take that,” she said. She held out her slender gloved hand.
“Meantersay,” the brute began.
Lady Olympia didn’t move, didn’t utter a syllable, only stood with her hand out, waiting.
He gave her the whip.
Ripley would have let out a whoop, but instinct told him this was a delicate balance. Matters could turn dangerous in an instant. As Ripley moved nearer, as unobtrusively as was possible for a six-foot-plus man in fighting trim, the man spoke, and a cloud of alcoholic fumes floated outward.
“Meantersay, that’s my dog, plague take him,” he said. “And he cost me a bloody fortune, the miserable cur. Obedient, they said. Trained for—for hunting. Right. All my eye and Betty Martin.”
“You struck a dumb animal,” she said. “With a whip. How would you like it?” She raised the whip as though to strike.
The fellow put up a defensive arm. “Hoy! I wasn’t—” He swayed and started to stumble, but righted himself at the last minute.
“I am painfully tempted to give you a taste,” she said. “To help you remember, the next time. But that would be ill-bred.”
She looked at the dog. “Come,” she said.
The dog rose.
“The devil!” the fellow said. “You can’t—that’s my dog!”
She made a slight beckoning gesture and the dog went to her.
“Sam!” his owner shouted. “You come here, or I’ll—”
“You won’t,” said Lady Olympia. “You don’t deserve to own a dog.”
“You’re not taking my dog! I’ll have the law on you!” He looked about him. “Somebody fetch a constable. That’s my dog, and when the stubborn cur don’t do what I say, I teach him. Nobody else’s bloody business.”
The dog beater was shouting about robbers and interferers and constables and who knew what else. People emerged from the ground floor coffee room. Spectators spilled out onto the gallery overlooking the inn yard.
“Ahem,” Ripley said.
Headed for the post chaise, canine at her side, Lady Olympia paused and looked up at him, surprised. “Oh,” she said. “There you are.”
“We’re not taking the dog,” he said.
“We can’t leave him with that unspeakable person,” she said. “Striking a dumb animal! With a whip! And it wasn’t a light warning tap, or striking the ground to get the animal’s attention. He made the dog cry out—you heard him—and this is a lurcher. They’re stupendously quiet dogs.”
Ripley could see what it was. A poacher’s dog. A silent hunter. It stood close to her, by her hand, the one holding the whip. The animal trembled.
“They’re stealing my dog!” the dog beater shouted. “Somebody stop them!”
“Don’t be a bloody fool, Bullard,” somebody called out. “It’s His Grace of Ripley. A duke, you half-wit. He can do what he likes.”
“He don’t take my dog! After he lets his doxy do the dirty work for him. I want my dog!”
Ripley sighed. Of course. Always had to be some drunken blusterer in the vicinity, saying the wrong thing. Always had to be some jackass uttering words one couldn’t let pass.
He turned back to Bullard and said, in the mild, amiable tone all who knew him would recognize as the Voice Of Death—or at least Of Serious Pain—“What did you say?”
Ripley spoke lazily, offhandedly.
All the same, the hairs on the back of Olympia’s neck stood up and she sensed, with the certainty of a young woman who’d grown up surrounded by males, the stirrings of the inborn masculine need to kill other males.
Despite belonging to the opposite gender, she felt similar stirrings. She longed to thrust Ripley out of the way and lash the brute Bullard until he bawled like a baby. For the lurcher’s sake, she made herself calm. Gently she rested her hand on the dog’s head. He edged closer.
“You heard me!” the dog’s owner said. “You and your fancy piece there, what goes around bullying fellows what’s too mannerly to fight with women, and steals a man’s property. You can’t walk out with my dog, like you own the world.”
“That’s twice you’ve insulted the lady,” Ripley said in the same mild tone.
“Lady! Her! And stole my whip, too!”
“That’s thrice,” Ripley said. “This is what I get for patience and forbearance. No more chances. You will address the lady as my lady and you will apologize. Now.”
“Apologize? To her? I bloody well won’t! I want my dog!”
Ripley hit him. It was shockingly swift, straight to the gut. Bullard folded over and crumpled to his knees.
“Apologize,” Ripley said. “And make it quick. While these new gloves are far from ideal, I’d rather not get blood on them.” He paused, waiting for Bullard to catch his breath.
“Took me off guard, you ugly buffer nabber,” the drunkard gasped. He looked about him. “Everybody seen you do it.”
Thanks to Mr. Grose’s Lexicon Balatronicum, Olympia knew a buffer nabber was a dog stealer.
“It seems my warning went over your head,” Ripley said. “Then I shall speak more plainly. If the next words out of your mouth are not ‘I beg your pardon, my lady,’ you’ll oblige me to injure you severely.”
“Try it!” Bullard put up his fists. “Try it, you filthy—” The rest comprised extremely bad words.
Ripley knocked his hands away, hard enough to unbalance him, but before the man could topple, the duke grabbed him, curling his big hands about the bully’s throat and lifting him up off the ground. Clawing at the gloved hands, legs dangling, the man managed to choke out a stream of words Olympia had never actually heard uttered, though she recognized them from Mr. Grose’s fascinating work.
The duke’s calm, cool voice carried easily across the dead silence of the inn yard, “You will address the lady as my lady, and you will apologize, or I shall have to make your life unpleasant.”
“Go ahead and kill me,” the fool choked out. “You’ll hang, and I’ll see you in hell.”
“Wouldn’t dream of killing you,” Ripley said. “Too quick. No fun in that. No, what I thought I’d do is start with breaking a few bones, then a few more, until there are too many for the surgeon to mend.”
Bullard’s face was turning purple, but he managed to gargle references to Ripley’s penchant for unnatural acts with farm animals.
“What a tedious fellow you are,” Ripley said. “Maybe I’ll drop you and see what happens. I hope I don’t accidently step on your head.”
“Go ahead,” the man croaked.
Ripley let go of him.
Bullard fell onto the cobblestones.
Olympia expected him to bounce up again. Some men didn’t know when they were done for.
Apparently, hitting solid stone made an impression. Bullard clutched his throat but made no other movement. He lay where he’d been dropped, eyes open, staring up at the duke.
“Are you quite done?” Ripley said.
Bullard nodded.
“Then say you’re sorry.
”
“Sorry,” Bullard gasped.
“Not to me, you ridiculous person. To the lady.”
“Sorry. My. Lady.”
“Good. Now go away.”
Bullard lurched to his feet. He called to the dog. Tail down, head down, the creature edged nearer to Olympia.
“No,” Olympia said. “You’ve forfeited the dog.”
“Sam’s my property,” Bullard cried hoarsely. “He goes with me!”
Olympia looked at Ripley.
“We are not taking the dog,” he said.
“We can’t leave him,” she said. “He’s hurt and terrified.”
“That’s my dog! I paid a bloody fortune for the mutinous cur! You’ve got no right!”
“You have no right to him,” she said. “You threw it away when you struck a defenseless creature. You’ve lost him.”
“Get in the carriage,” Ripley said.
“I will not leave this animal to him,” she said. “As soon as we’re gone, he’ll punish the dog for what you did to him.”
“We are not taking the dog,” Ripley said.
“Sam, come,” Bullard snapped.
The dog looked at him and shivered.
“He’s not going with that man,” Olympia said.
“That’s my bloody dog!”
“We are not taking the dog,” Ripley told Olympia. “In case you failed to notice, this animal is not a Pekingese. He cannot sit in your lap. The post chaise holds two people, barely.”
“He can ride in the boot,” she said. “In the crate.”
“Your wedding ensemble is in the crate,” he said.
“The dog can use it for a cushion. It isn’t as though I’ll wear it again.”
“That’s my bloody dog! You’re not taking my dog!”
“Stow it,” Ripley told Bullard. “The lady and I are negotiating.”