‘You are forgiven,’ said Atia. ‘It is what you do now that truly matters.’
‘I am going to attempt to be the good man whom you would not allow to die.’
‘You honour me, then,’ said Atia and bowed back.
She caught sight of Rab saying goodbye to his nephew. She could tell just by Rab’s expression what he was saying. Go back to your lessons and study hard. Take care of your mother and aunts. And no more camel racing, do you understand?
She saw them embrace. Zaidu swung up on to his camel and joined up with the final group, which was slowly filing out of camp. Livius and Plotius were soon atop their own camels at the back of the party and it was not long before Rab and Atia were watching them disappear around a bend.
‘It is not too late, you know,’ said Atia. ‘We can still join them.’
Rab was shaking his head. ‘And journey for forty more days and nights before I can lie with my wife in peace? I refuse. Besides, you have not yet heard my proposal.’
‘Proposal?’
‘I have a proposal for you Wife, but I can only express it to you in a high place, such as the top of that rock there.’ Rab pointed over Atia’s shoulder and grinned.
Atia did not turn to look, for she knew exactly where he was pointing. ‘You mean the rock that overlooks the lake, yes? The terrifying, precipitous diving rock?’ Atia had seen a few of the younger men jumping from the tall boulder the day before. She had not envied them their fun.
‘I seem to remember the last time you forced me up a steep cliff I lost my breakfast on your robe,’ Atia said.
‘Such a fond memory that is,’ Rab said. He stood before her and slowly began to walk forward. ‘It was our first embrace.’
‘Embrace?’ asked Atia. She took one step backwards and he stepped forward again, closing the distance. ‘You were carrying my lifeless body up a sheer cliff with my vomit running down your back.’
‘Your body felt so good against mine,’ he said. ‘I remember thinking that I had met my match.’
‘You did not think that!’
‘I certainly did. And since we are speaking honestly, I will admit now that while you rested against me I made bold to touch your backside.’ He stepped forward again and she stepped back.
‘What? While I was beyond my very wits?’
‘It may have been more of a caress than a touch,’ he said. Somehow, he was still pushing her backwards.
‘I feel as if I am being herded,’ she said.
‘I have always fancied the shepherding profession,’ he said. Before she knew it, they had arrived at the base of the diving rock. He scrambled on to its steep face and extended his hand. ‘I will not let you fall, my love. Come.’
* * *
She took his hand and they slowly made their way up the long, steep swath of rock. ‘This is a first for us,’ he remarked cheerfully, trying to keep her from thinking about the ground, which was becoming more and more distant.
‘What do you mean, a first? You do not expect me to jump, do you?’
‘No, not at all,’ he lied. ‘I was talking about walking together. You know, side by side. Alone.’
She thought for a moment. ‘You know, you are right. We have walked for hundreds of miles, yet never really walked together.’
‘And never been able to have a conversation without the whole world hearing.’
They arrived at the top. ‘And never been able to do this.’ He bent his lips to hers and before she could protest he was kissing her—the longest, slowest, most delicious kiss he had ever given in all his life.
He squeezed her against him and could feel her nerves disappearing. ‘Do you know how many hours I have spent dreaming of this?’ He let his hands wander to her breasts. ‘Atia, I want you so much.’ The morning sun beat down upon them, and he started to think about the water just below. How wonderful it would be to touch her in its cool depths.
‘My proposal is this,’ he began. ‘I wish to travel to the land of India with you. We can find a ship and sail with the wind, just as Hippalus did. We can stay as long as we like—one month, three months, a year.’
‘We can see the elephants?’ she said.
‘Yes!’ he said. ‘And we can sail back with a load of incense and spices and make our fortune. What do you think?’
‘You know that I would follow you anywhere, but I have always longed to know India. And by going there we can learn the sea route and help other Nabataeans do the same. It is a brilliant plan and you are a magnificent man.’
‘I am glad you think so, because you are stuck with me,’ he said.
He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her and they gazed out at the blue pool for a long while. ‘How does the water stay there?’ she asked. ‘I mean, how does it not just seep down into the sand?’
‘Bitumen,’ he replied. ‘From the Bitumen Lake. The pool is lined with it. So are all our cisterns and pools. It is the secret of our success.’ He was kissing her again. He could not help it. ‘You are my bitumen,’ he said.
‘Is the pond very deep?’
‘It is very deep,’ he said between kisses.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I have made the jump many times and never touched bottom.’
‘It is growing quite hot,’ she said. She was arching her head back in that way that drove him mad. ‘It would be nice to take a dip in the pool.’
‘It is a long walk down to the shore,’ he said, ‘and I am rather tired of walking.’
‘I am rather tired of walking myself,’ she said, taking his hand.
And suddenly they were not walking at all. They were flying.
* * *
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Keep reading for an excerpt from Least Likely to Marry a Duke by Louise Allen.
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Least Likely to Marry a Duke
by Louise Allen
Chapter One
Great Staning, Dorset—May 1st, 1814
William Xavier Cosmo de Whitham Calthorpe, Fourth Duke of Aylsham—William to his recently deceased grandfather, Will in his own head and Your Grace to the rest of the world—strode up the gentle
slope of the far boundary of his new home and relaxed into the calming certainty that all was as it should be.
There was the slight matter of the turmoil he had left behind in the house, but he would do battle with that later, when he returned for breakfast. Patience and the application of benevolent discipline was all that was required. A lot of patience.
Now he was doing what any responsible landowner did first thing in the morning—he was walking his estate, learning its strengths and weaknesses and needs so that he could be a good landlord. He was the Duke now and he knew his duty, whether it was to the undisciplined brood of half-siblings who were currently making domestic life hideous or the hundreds of tenants and the numerous estates that were now his responsibility.
Oulton Castle, twenty miles away, was the true seat of the Dukes of Aylsham, but although, naturally, it was in a state of perfect repair and management, it was completely unsuitable for the large and lively family he had just acquired. This manor, Stane Hall, had been in the hands of excellent tenants for years, but with its improved drainage, its unoccupied Dower House and its complete absence of lethal moat, towering medieval walls and displays of ancient weaponry it was a far safer home for now. He could only be thankful that the tenant had been ready to retire to Worthing and had needed no persuasion to leave.
Will pushed thoughts of problems away to focus on what he was doing. This was the seventh day he had been in residence and the first morning he had been able to spare to inspect the land. Ahead must be the northernmost point of the boundary.
He checked the map he had folded into his pocket. Sure enough, the six low irregular bumps that lay before him like a string of half-buried beads were shown with stylised hatching and labelled ‘Ancient Tumuli (Druidic).’ The low morning sun cast long shadows from their bases and the boundary line was shown on the map as running along the crest of the chain. There was no sign of a fence.
That was not good. Fences were of the utmost importance to a perfectly managed estate and he intended Stane Hall to be perfect. Dukes did not accept second-best, either in their staff, their surroundings or themselves. That had been one of the first lessons his grandfather had taught him when the third Duke had plucked Will out of the miserable chaos that life had become with his father, the now deceased and always erratic George, Marquess of Bromhill.
The old Duke’s first attempts at training the perfect heir had all gone for nothing the moment his son, the newly widowed George, set eyes on the lovely Miss Claudia Edwards, writer and passionate educational theorist. A life made notorious by the couple’s eccentricity had ended with the Marquess’s plunge to his death from a rooftop, where he had been putting into practice the theory that a gentleman should be able to perform any task he might ask of others, including manual labour.
Three months later Will was still struggling to feel anything but deep irritation that his father, whom he had hardly known, had failed to grasp the simple fact that he had an obligation to provide employment for as many local people as possible, not replace his own roof tiles at the expense of a skilled craftsman. Will rather suspected that the realisation that he could now hand the title safely to his grandson had enabled the old Duke to finally give up the fight against a debilitating heart condition.
The loss of his grandfather was one for which he was not yet ready to forgive his father. Will had been Marquess of Bromhill for only five weeks when he found himself Duke of Aylsham. That was only eleven—no, twelve weeks ago, he corrected himself. Three months and the pain inside for the grandfather he had lived with for fourteen years had not subsided. But while dukes might observe all the outward shows of mourning, they did not speak of loss and loneliness and certainly not of their fear of finding themselves inadequate to the role they had to fill, Will told himself. He wondered if the old man had felt like this when he had inherited the title. Grandfather would never have admitted it, he thought ruefully.
Will had absorbed all his predecessor’s lessons and he intended to be every inch as perfect a nobleman as the third Duke. That would be easier with the right wife at his side, he knew. The old man had been firm on the importance of not marrying an unsuitable woman and that rule was underlined in Will’s mental list of priorities, as if his father’s example was not warning enough.
Suitable meant well bred, handsome, fertile and brought up to the highest standards of deportment. A pleasant disposition, an adequate level of education and reasonable intelligence were, of course, desirable. Unconventional ideas and eccentricity were impossible, as demonstrated by his stepmother, who, despite perfectly understandable displays of grief for her recent loss, absolutely refused to observe any of the mourning customs suitable to her sex and station in life.
Will brought his mind back from the problem of his stepmother and the prospect of the Marriage Mart—which could not be contemplated for the next forty weeks of mourning, unfortunately—and reapplied it to the matter of boundary fences. He could have brought his estate manager with him on this walk, but he preferred to make his own judgements first, not allow his staff to gloss over shortcomings or try to distract him from problems.
Brooding unproductively on the past had brought him to the foot of the largest tumulus. Naturally, he had come out dressed appropriately for the rigours of the countryside, and well broken-in boots and his second-oldest pair of breeches were entirely suitable for scrambling up hillocks.
His boots slid on the rabbit-cropped grass as he reached the top, turning as he climbed to face back the way he had come. From here the view over his park was a fine one with the distant glint of water from the lake, a group of grazing fallow deer and mature trees in picturesque coppices. The warming air brought green scents, a hint of hedgerow blossoms, the rumour of the dung hill awaiting spreading in a nearby field.
Was the house visible from here? He shifted back a step to change the angle and the ground vanished from beneath him, pitching him down into the mound in a shower of earth and stones.
Will landed with a painful thud on his tail bone. Dirt and pebbles rained down on his bare head and his low-crowned beaver hat rolled away over beaten earth to the knees of the young woman crouched in front of him. The young woman with a loose plait of rich toffee-coloured hair over one shoulder, wide brown eyes—and a human skull clutched to her midriff. At which point something bit him sharply on the left buttock.
* * *
There was very little warning, only a long shadow falling across her as a body crashed down into her excavation slicing into the mound. Verity lunged forward, grabbed at the skull and rocked back on her heels as the man landed in front of her with a grunt, one short, sharp Anglo-Saxon expletive and a loud rattle of stones.
Silence. It was neither a thunderbolt nor a fallen angel facing her, either of which might have been easier to deal with. The dust settled, leaving her staring at a fair-haired man, blue eyes narrowed against the light, mouth set with either discomfort or fury. Very likely both. He was dressed in expensive, simple and utterly appropriate country clothing, now filthy.
Utterly appropriate. I know who you are. Oh, no...
His handsome face contorted in a wince of pain and she realised why. As social disasters went, this ranked high.
‘Sir, I fear you may be sitting on a tooth.’
Not the correct form of address, but as we have not been introduced...
Those blue eyes narrowed a little further as he shifted on to his right hip, reached underneath his coat-tails and produced a human jawbone. ‘A tooth? Singular?’ he enquired. Then his gaze shifted to what she was cradling against her bosom. ‘Madam, you appear to be holding a skull. A human skull.’
‘Yes,’ Verity agreed.
Presumably he was being sarcastic with the appear. It could hardly be mistaken for anything else.
‘I am and it is. Is the jawbone undamaged? I mean, are you unhurt?’ There was no really ladylike way of asking a duke if his left buttock had
been wounded by an Ancient Briton. It was absolutely out of the question to snatch the jaw from him to check that it was intact. The bone, that is.
‘I am sure it is nothing serious, madam. I apologise for my language earlier.’ It would be much easier to deal with this if he had shown the anger he must be feeling. Or even moaned in acknowledgement of the pain. As it was, the conversation might as well be happening at Almack’s. The Duke shifted his long legs as though to stand.
‘No!’ She took a breath and moderated the volume. ‘Please stay exactly where you are or you will damage the sides. Just allow me to move everything.’ Verity placed the skull carefully in the box of hay she had prepared for it and held out her hand for the jaw. When that was safe she moved back, gathered her skirts around her ankles and stood up.
The Duke, being a gentleman, had averted his gaze. He was probably too cross to consider ogling her in any case. Verity ignored the urge to see exactly what would provoke him into behaving improperly and waited while he rose to his feet in an enviably effortless and controlled manner.
He is the youngest Duke, not yet thirty, and he has no vices to mar that fine figure.
Her cousin Roderick had told her about the man who was now Duke of Aylsham. His reputation had been built up over many years of being merely the impeccable Lord Calthorpe and apparently the man was a byword for acting with absolute propriety under all circumstances.
They call him Lord Appropriate.
Roddy had written that about eighteen months ago, in the course of one of his chatty, gossip-filled letters.
Of course his father the Marquess, is eccentric, to put it very kindly, and his stepmother is a notorious bluestocking, so it was probably a relief to be rescued by his grandfather, who took him to live with him when Calthorpe was a boy.
The old Duke is the stiffest stickler for what is due to his position that you may imagine, but, even so, Calthorpe appears to have gone to extremes to conform. One day he will be the starchiest duke in the kingdom. He has even managed a duel with perfect correctness—a lady was insulted, he issued a challenge, deloped, shook hands with the other man even though he did not delope, merely missed, and refused to gossip afterwards.
Seduced by Her Rebel Warrior Page 24
