There was nothing to stop him walking over to the sideboard right now and pouring himself a glass of that exquisite golden whiskey they made in Scotland. The idea had hovered at the edge of his mind all day. He could see himself throwing down his cards and saying, “Enough is enough!” He was a duke, wasn’t he? He could do as he wished.
Imogen looked at him sharply and then pushed away from her chair. She walked over to the sideboard while he watched hungrily.
“How is baby Mary today?” she asked over her shoulder, giving Gabe another one of her delicious smiles.
Gabe answered something, but Rafe was too busy watching to pay attention. If Imogen took a drink in front of him, that would be a sign. He’d been through enough agony. He could drink a little, and then keep his drinking more controlled, so he didn’t have a headache every morning. It wasn’t as if he ever neglected his estate…much. Perhaps he would only allow himself a drink three times a week. That sounded good. Or perhaps only when he had guests.
He started to his feet. “What the devil are you doing?”
Imogen had pushed open one of the windows that looked down over the courtyard before Holbrook Court. “I’m throwing out this liquor,” she said simply, as if she were discarding a piece of broken glass.
Rafe wasn’t even sure how he found himself on his feet, but there he was, grabbing her arm.
“Ow!” she said.
“That’s whiskey,” he snapped. “My God, you’ve tossed the Tobermary.”
With her left hand she reached out and grabbed a crystal decanter. “Why not?” she said tauntingly. “You’re not going to drink it again.”
“That’s no reason to destroy it!” He looked wildly back at the table. His brother was watching, eyebrows raised. Griselda had looked up and was actually smiling. “Tell her that she has no right to pitch my best whiskey into the courtyard,” he snarled at Griselda.
“The only one who will care is you,” Imogen said, still holding the decanter high in her left hand. “You can’t stop thinking about it, can you? I’ve watched you look over here all evening. I wouldn’t put it past you to sneak down after we’ve all gone to bed and drink the place dry!”
Rafe just stared at her. He had toyed with that idea…but—
Crash! The crystal decanter shattered against the dark cobblestones far below, and quick as the flash of an eye, Imogen snatched up another.
“Don’t—” Rafe gasped, but this one didn’t make it through the window. It caught on the frame and shattered, filling the room with the pungent, deep smell of the best whiskey made in the world. Rafe felt like a terrier scenting a fox.
“You’re pathetic,” Imogen said to him, tossing another decanter into the darkness outside the window.
By some miracle this one didn’t smash; he heard it fall on its side with a dull clunk. He could just see jewel-colored port leaking onto the dusty cobblestones, far below.
“Will you please sit down so that I don’t have to destroy any more of your crystal? Because I will,” she added.
Rafe just blinked at her, a hairbreadth from doing her an injury. Then Gabe took him by the elbow and led him back to the table, and Imogen commenced, as happy as a housewife hanging out laundry, to empty all the decanters Rafe owned: whiskey from the Bowmore distillery, from Ardbeg, Glen Garioch, and Magnus Gunson. They weren’t labeled. He knew which was which by the color and the weight of the liquor.
“I expect you have more of the same stored around the castle,” she said. “Phew, what a stench!” She reached out and pulled the bell.
Brinkley appeared so promptly that he must have been just outside the door, likely wondering about all the crashing glass. “I’ve had to purge the duke’s whiskey collection,” Imogen said airily. “Now, is whiskey kept in another location as well?”
Brinkley nodded, eyeing the cracked decanter on the floor.
“Then why don’t you lead me to it,” Imogen said, her voice allowing no disagreement.
Brinkley looked at Rafe, who shot him a look of pure rage. But before he could open his mouth, Gabe said, “His Grace agrees with Lady Maitland, Brinkley.” And Gabe put a hand on Rafe’s arm.
It took everything Rafe had not to floor his brother. But he couldn’t. Floor him, that is.
Imogen followed Brinkley from the room.
“I know why Draven Maitland jumped onto that horse,” Rafe said hoarsely. “He was just trying to get away from his wife.”
“Imogen has backbone,” Griselda said. “She fought to keep that foolish young man alive.”
Rafe didn’t like the implicit comparison. “I’m not trying to kill myself.”
“In that case, it’s a good thing that you’ve given up the liquor,” Gabe said, laying out the cards for another hand.
“We can’t play without that she-devil,” Rafe snarled.
“We’ll play this hand as dummy whist,” Gabe said.
A few minutes later Imogen returned, positively beaming with success.
“Well?” Rafe couldn’t not ask. “Did you destroy the best whiskey to be found outside Scotland, then?”
“Just imagine,” Imogen said, not meeting his eyes. “There were barrels of it in the basement. So rather than throw it all out, Brinkley is loading it onto carts. It’ll be taken to Bramble Hill, Lucius’s house, come daylight. Would you like to confirm that all your spirits are leaving the premises?” She nodded mockingly toward the windows that faced the courtyard. “I wouldn’t want you to injure yourself wandering around the castle at night searching through the wine cellars.”
He hated her. With every cell in his body, he hated her. He didn’t move.
She didn’t even shiver at the look in his eyes. “In that case, you’ll have to take my word for it. Brinkley took all the whiskey and the port. He seemed to have some scruples about moving the port—something about it needing to remain still—but when I made it clear that it was either move or be smashed, he gave in. There are only a few bottles of wine left in the entire castle.”
“You’re a she-devil,” Rafe said. He looked down at the cards. They seemed to be pulsating in his hand, growing larger and then shrinking. He lurched to his feet. “I have to get out of here. I’m going for a walk.”
“I’ll join you,” Imogen said.
“Anyone but you!”
“What’s the matter?” she taunted. “Are you afraid I’ll say something you don’t want to hear?”
Gabe gathered together the piles of cards. “Perhaps Miss Pythian-Adams will consent to play a two-handed vingt-et-un?”
Rafe strode out of the room after Imogen. He pushed open the great north door, and they walked into a patch of light cast from the entry at their backs. The tall firs that usually tossed their heads in the sun and the wind had merged into shapeless, dark crests, barely moving in the light of the moon. It was unseasonably warm for an October evening. He walked down the steps, his feet crunching on the gravel sweep before the great door.
“It’s rather gloomy out here,” Imogen said.
Rafe heard with pleasure the shiver in her voice. It would do that termagant good to be unnerved. She generally acted as if nothing could frighten her. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Where? Into the dark?” But she trotted after him as he stepped out of the circle of light.
“To the stables.” It really was dark, so he let her catch up and took her hand in his. It felt oddly intimate. He had walked arm in arm with ladies his whole life, but it was different to walk through the trees in the dark, feeling only the clutch of a woman’s hand. She had a small, delicate hand for such a shrew.
“Why the stables?” she said. Then she stopped, pulling him to a halt. “You’re not thinking of riding to the village to find a pub, are you?”
The scorn in her voice stiffened his backbone. “Actually, no.” And he hadn’t been. That was too demeaning, as if he were—indeed—in servitude. “I have a horse on the point of foaling.”
They followed the path by avoiding the pitch bla
ck of the woods around them rather than by actually seeing their way. He could hear only little rustlings in the woods. For a moment his stomach roiled, and then quieted.
“It sounds as if we’re walking through a huge abandoned house,” Imogen said. He could hear the fear in her voice. She was holding his hand tightly.
“Amazing,” he said laconically. “You’re actually showing an emotion that characterizes ladies. Afraid of the dark, are you?”
She didn’t answer. They walked into the yard surrounding a long row of whitewashed stables. A boy started to his feet as they walked in the door, rubbing his eyes.
“You shouldn’t sleep with the lamp lit,” Rafe said, his voice harsh. “You could start a fire.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy stammered. “Yes, sir, I know that. I just dropped off for a moment, sir.”
Rafe unhooked the lantern. “Why don’t you go to your bed? We’ll blow this out when we leave.”
“I can’t, sir,” the boy said. “Mr. James said as how I was to stay because Lady Macbeth is expecting to foal, sir, and if she makes a sound, I’m to go wake Mr. James, sir.”
“I looked at her this afternoon, and I doubt she’ll foal tonight. But I’ll bring the lantern back to you.”
They walked down the alleyway between the stalls. None of the horses seemed to be sleeping. They were standing in their clean, spacious stalls, stamping their feet and whickering anxiously as Rafe and Imogen walked down the aisle. “It’s the foal coming,” Rafe said. “They can tell, and they don’t sleep.”
“I would guess this is Lady Macbeth,” Imogen said, stopping.
The mare had glossy, swollen sides. She turned to look at them, a bit of hay stuck to her nose in a way that made her look comical, like a clown wearing cat’s whiskers.
“She won’t have the babe tonight,” Rafe said.
Imogen had her hand out, and the mare began snuffling, licking her palm for the salt. “She’s lovely,” Imogen breathed. “Oh, you’re a beauty, aren’t you?”
Rafe walked on, carrying the lantern, and after a moment she ran to catch up. “You could have waited while I greeted that mare,” she said crossly.
“I haven’t time for a girl’s palaver with ponies,” he said.
“Oh? Because you have important things to do, do you? Out here in the middle of the night?”
Rafe thought about how much he disliked Imogen. “I’m thinking of taking a ride.”
“A ride? In the dark?”
He liked the idea more and more. “You needn’t join me. You’re not dressed for it.”
“I can ride in anything!” she said, just as he knew she would. “But where will you go?”
“You look awake,” he said to a cheerful-looking gelding with an arching nose and sweet eyes.
“He’s not heavy enough for you!” Imogen exclaimed.
He liked that she knew horses so well. “For you,” he said. Then he turned and bellowed down the stables. “A side saddle, if you please.”
Imogen’s eyes were huge in the light of the lantern. “I’ll take my own mare. Where is Posy?”
“You can’t. I sent her to the north pasture yesterday.”
“I’m not going sidesaddle in the dark on a strange horse,” she said. “It’s unsafe. I’ll ride him astride.”
“In that dress?” he flicked a glance down at her dress. Of course it had practically no bodice; none of her garments did.
“I’m sure I can manage,” she snapped.
The boy came, puzzled, and then swung an ordinary saddle, rather than the sidesaddle, onto the gelding. “He’s called Luna,” he told her. “In a foreign language, that means sun. Or maybe moon.”
Rafe took his own thoroughbred, a huge animal with a barrel chest.
“Well, he should be able to manage your weight,” Imogen said. He felt another surge of dislike. Maybe she wouldn’t be so cocky riding down a strange road in the dark.
“Let’s go,” he said, leading out his horse and allowing her to take her own. He had sent the boy back to the far end of the stables, with the lantern. Now the stables were lit only by the chilly light of the moon.
“I hope movement makes you throw up,” she said suddenly. She had figured out why he wanted to go for a ride in the dark. Rafe grinned, his first real smile in days. Too bad she couldn’t see it.
Outside he swung onto his horse without offering to assist her. A woman who thought to ride astride in an evening gown had no need of his help. But he did look around. She had deftly backed Luna to a mounting post, and a second later she was on the horse. Luna stood quietly enough, his ears flicking back and forth, while Imogen rustled about with her skirts.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s go, then.”
Rafe couldn’t see how she’d arranged herself. In fact, he’d never seen a woman ride astride. If she hadn’t been the shrew that she was, he would have found it incredibly arousing. Presumably her legs were hugging the back of the steed—
“Are those your undergarments?” he asked. Her legs seemed to be clothed in white.
“Yes,” Imogen said casually. “French pantaloons. Quite useful for riding, if only Papa had been able to afford such a thing back when we used to ride without saddles.”
He grunted and moved off toward the road. The last thing he needed to do was stare at her legs. He had enough problems.
At first they both minced their way down the road. The moon slipped in and out of clouds, and when it was hidden the road would suddenly disappear. Rafe guessed she must be frightened. Once he thought he heard a gasp. But he kept his horse ahead of hers, relishing the idea of Imogen with wide-open, terrified eyes. It would do her good.
There was a ripping noise behind him.
“Imogen!” he said sharply, swinging about. He didn’t want her so terrified that she fell from her horse.
At that moment the moon sprang from behind a cloud, covering the road and the trees with a silvery trembling light. Imogen held up a stretch of cloth. She was laughing, with not a sign of terror on her face. Then she let it go.
“It was in my way. Isn’t this brilliant? I love riding at night!”
He watched her skirt fly into a ditch. Now all she wore was the low-necked top of her gown and those white pantaloons.
“Isn’t that uncomfortable?” he asked.
“Nope.” She grinned at him. “Want to have a race?”
“A race? In the dark?”
“Yes!”
“No! You’re risking your horse’s fetlocks. There might be a hole in the road, and he’d have no time to adjust.”
She pouted. Her hair was falling down all over her shoulders. He looked back at the road. It shimmered in front of them, looking as straight and clean as an English toll road.
“The clouds have blown away for the moment,” she pointed out.
He hesitated. “You’re not drunk,” she said acidly. “I’m sure you’ll have much steadier hands with your mount than you are accustomed to.”
“Fine!” he snapped, backing his horse next to hers. He glanced at her and frowned. “Why are you riding like that?”
She was poised above her saddle, bottom tilted slightly in the air, legs gripping her horse.
“It’s more comfortable,” she said cheerfully. “I’m afraid I don’t have a great deal of padding where it most counts.” She looked down fleetingly.
He felt a surge of lust such as he hadn’t felt in years. He swallowed. It must be the effect of giving up liquor.
Actually, he couldn’t remember the last time he felt desire for a woman. One advantage, to put against all the disadvantages of not drinking. Even if he did have to recover his desire in the presence of his least desirable ward.
“Your choice,” he said, shrugging.
“The jockeys ride this way,” she said, clearly unconcerned by the fact he was seeing every curve of her bottom, clad only in the lightest cotton. A lady she wasn’t. “That means I shall win.”
“No, you won’t,” he growled. “W
e’ll go to that bend. On my mark.”
He won. But only by a hairbreadth, and only in a terrific gallop at the end of the road and a wild scream of laughter from her.
“Oh, that was marvelous!” she cried when it was over. “Luna, you’re a beauty, a true beauty! We would have had you if you weren’t riding such a monster of a horse,” she said to Rafe.
Rafe grinned back. But he noticed how she winced as she sat back on her horse. “Perhaps we should walk them now,” he suggested. “After all, it’s the middle of the night, and they must be tired.”
“All right,” she agreed, too quickly. So he jumped off his horse and then came to the side of hers and held up his hands.
He hadn’t done such a thing in years, and so he bungled it; somehow his hands caught on her bottom rather than her hips. And where she should have been covered by layers and layers of cloth, of course there was only fragile French cotton, tied with little bows, he noticed now. His hands were sliding down a curve that had him harder than—
Harder than he’d been in years.
Perhaps there was something to giving up the tipple. He could take a mistress…a lush, welcoming woman who would greet him with a smile and a hot look of desire. Who would never scold.
He saw something in Imogen’s eyes when he put her on the ground. She had felt his hands too. And it had quieted her, at least. So that was good. She didn’t rail at him on the way home. That would teach her not to rip off her skirt and throw it in a ditch when there was no one around but a man. She was lucky he was a gentleman. And, for that matter, her guardian, for he still considered himself such, whether she was widowed or no.
They walked their horses back down the moonlit road. Imogen’s hair spilled around her shoulders, making her look witchlike.
He felt completely alive, his hair blowing from his brow, his legs warm from the exercise, his horse snuffling cheerfully in his ear. They walked farther, and it occurred to Rafe that he couldn’t remember having such a vivid experience in years.
Oh, he remembered the headaches in the morning. And the golden, burning pleasure of his first drink in the evening. And the lullaby sweetness of finishing a glass and feeling calm steal over him.