“Lady Boadicea.” He gave her a shake. “Are you hurt?”
Of course she was hurt. Every bone in her body seemed to ache. Her breath was coming in fast, uneven gulps. She didn’t think she could manage a coherent word. She stared at him, mute, wondering at the misfortune that should have led him of all people upon her in this moment of supreme ignominy.
His grip on her upper arms tightened, and she realized belatedly that he was on his knees before her. If she hadn’t just suffered the horse fall of the century, she would have taken great pleasure in the sight, which seemed to have become a habit of sorts for him. Yes indeed, some perverse part of her rather rallied to the notion of the Duke of Bainbridge as her loyal vassal, even shaken and sore as she was.
The duke, however, was not struck by the same sense of whimsy clouding her fogged mind. His frown was severe enough for a funeral. “Damn it, say something. What in the hell were you doing, riding Damask Rose hell for leather on your own? She’s a hellion. You could have been killed, you bloody fool.”
“Damask Rose,” she forced through a mouth that had gone dry. “Was she injured?”
It was the first lucid thing she could think of to say. Truly, she would hate for her actions to have caused such a beautiful mare to be hurt.
The duke glowered at her. There was no other word for it. “She is fine, cantering in the field ahead, no thanks to your foolishness.”
“Go to her,” she urged, as much because she wanted the mare to be secured as she wanted to be free of his presence. In her vulnerable state, bruised and shaken, she could not control her emotions, and above all, she did not wish to be weak before this man. “I am fine.”
“You are most certainly not fine,” he gritted, running his hands all over her person in inspection. Across her jaw, the back of her head, down her arms, lower still, riffling through her skirts, and sliding beneath them to find her ankles. “What in the hell were you thinking?”
His fingers probed beneath her boots, sliding against her stockings, seeking the knobby protrusion of her bones. She would have shooed him away, swept her skirts back down, but there was something about the Duke of Bainbridge’s touch on her ankles that made her heart leap in a different fashion than being unseated from her horse had.
“I was thinking I longed for an escape.” She strove for honesty. “Also, I was not thinking. I did not wish to endanger Damask Rose. She is a beautiful horse, Duke. I greatly admire her.”
“You would,” he muttered, continuing his inspection of her person. His touch skimmed her calves, searing her through the barrier keeping him from her skin. “She is wild. I instructed the grooms not to allow guests to ride her.”
Was it her imagination, or did he linger overly long on his inquiry into the state of her calves? His fingers were long and strong, enveloping the muscled curve of her lower limb, stroking in a way that made her feel flushed despite the cool chill of the early morning.
She met his gaze, doing her best to pretend indifference, for she would not allow him to see that she liked this search. No, indeed. “I prefer wild, Duke. And I never ask for permission. I do as I wish. Life is much better lived in such fashion. Perhaps you should try it.”
He made a dismissive sound deep in his throat. He found her knees and lingered. His thumbs traced circles in the sensitive hollows beneath. “Fools do as they wish and suffer the consequences.”
Perhaps he had a point there, but she refused to acknowledge it. His examination moved on, beyond her knees to her thighs. What was wrong with her that she longed to open wide, feel him glide his fingers even higher?
She forced herself to think. “You are wrongheaded in that statement, Duke. In truth, fools suffer the consequences for not doing as they wish.”
“On this, as in many other matters, we are in disagreement, Lady Boadicea.” He worked over her inner thighs. She gasped when his touch grazed the slit of her drawers. “Are you injured?”
No. She was not. Her cheekbones went hot. She fell into his gaze. “Yes,” she lied, hoping it would make him remove his touch.
He stilled, his mouth tensing even more. “Where?”
“My pride,” she said tartly. “Is that located inside my drawers, Your Grace? I’m sure you would know better than I. You seem to be quite familiar with them.”
“Fuck,” he ground out, withdrawing his touch and flipping her skirts back down and into place. The delicious rumble of his voice sent a frisson of something unwanted and yet pleasant through her. “Where do you find your impudence, Lady Boadicea?”
She should have been shocked by his curse even though it was the second time in as many days that she’d heard him utter it. She ought to have been offended as a proper lady would be. Definitely she should have recoiled. But Bo had never been the sort of lady who did was she was supposed to do.
“Where do you find yours, Duke?” she asked instead.
He rose to his full, commanding height and held out his hand for her. His expression was tight. “If attempting to ascertain whether or not you’d suffered harm to your person is impudence, I stand guilty as charged.”
She ignored his hand and hauled herself to her feet on her own strength. A twinge of pain scored her lower back, but aside from that, it would appear she was none the worse for wear. She wondered then at the odds of him happening across her path when Boswell Manor encompassed thousands of acres.
Suspicion blossomed. “You were following me, weren’t you?”
He raised a haughty brow, and she was sure he was the only man in all the world who could smolder with arrogance. “I found myself unable to sleep, and I decided to go for a head-clearing ride. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a Lady Boadicea-shaped figure making off with my prized broodmare.”
She shot him a look of disbelief. “You expect me to believe you could discern my identity by my shape alone?”
The thorough glance he swept over her body made heat rise to her cheeks anew. “Yes.” He paused, his lips twisting into a half-smile, as though he didn’t dare allow himself to find humor in the moment. “There was also the certain knowledge that no other lady present would have the effrontery to steal one of my horses from the stable at dawn.”
Her bottom ached, her pride stung, and she felt oddly weak after her fall, and she was still quite put out with him after yesterday’s ball. Yet she could not quell the smile that curved her mouth in return. “Touché. One thief recognizes another, I suppose.”
He clenched his jaw. “Are you certain you didn’t hit your head? It would explain a great deal.”
She pinned him with a glare. “Very amusing, Your Insufferable Arrogance, particularly for a man of little humor. I’m so heartened you find entertainment in my brush with death.”
The moment the word left her lips, she wished she could call it back. Death. It fell between them with the harsh severity of a dropped guillotine. His façade changed, the hint of amusement flirting with his mouth firming instantly into a frown. His handsome countenance hardened back into its customary mask of icy disdain, those vibrant green orbs of his going flat and cold.
He stepped closer to her, gripping her upper arms once more, and lowered his face to sneer into hers. “That was not a brush with death, my lady. That was a fall from a horse caused by your own idiocy. Consider yourself fortunate you did no serious harm to either yourself or the mare.”
His derision pricked through her defenses. He was right, of course, but that wasn’t her greatest trouble just then. The odd weakness that had held her in its thrall ever since her fall assailed her then with renewed force, and she swayed and lost her balance, falling into his chest.
“I am sorry,” she whispered into his coat, for she was, as much for her foolish lack of care in riding Damask Rose as in the thoughtless way she’d forced his mind to return to the demons that still haunted him.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, gathering her up in his arms in the next instant as if she weighed no more than a mewling babe.
She ma
de a sound of protest, clutching his lapels for purchase. “Duke! Put me down at once.”
But he was already striding for his mount. “You need to be seen by a physician after that fall. It’s possible that you struck your head and you’re none the wiser. I wasn’t yet over the rise when you were thrown, so I didn’t see it for myself.”
“My legs are in working order,” she protested, “as are my faculties. I insist you release me.”
But even as she said the obligatory words, she had to admit that there was something lovely about being suspended in the duke’s strong arms. Something alarmingly delightful about being cradled against his broad chest. She turned her nose into the fabric of his coat and gave a discreet sniff.
Ah, there was his rich scent, masculine and earthy. At this proximity, she could discern the shadows of his whiskers stippling his wide jaw. What would it feel like to press her lips there, feel the rasp against her mouth and tongue? Would he taste like a woodland god?
“You’ll ride with me back to Boswell Manor, and that is final,” he ruined her rampant thoughts by issuing a ducal decree.
She jerked back to look up at him, abandoning her lascivious enjoyment of his strong throat and the oddly alluring ridge of his well-defined Adam’s apple. “I’m capable of walking and riding on my own, Duke. I insist that you cease this nonsense.”
“Lady Boadicea, you are to be my wife,” he snapped, finality in his baritone. “You will ride with me, and upon our return to Boswell Manor you will be seen by my personal physician.”
His wife.
Yes, she would be that, and heaven help them both. Mustering up her common sense, she chased away any lingering, foolish fire such a reminder lit in her belly. It was her baser nature that attracted her to him, and she’d read about as much in Bingley’s naughty books. Perfectly natural. It couldn’t be helped. The best she could hope for was that he would wish to live separate lives once they were wed, which would suit her fine. She could pursue her cause and he could continue to haunt the halls of Boswell Manor, thinking everyone else beneath him.
“I am not yet your wife,” she was compelled to argue. “Therefore, you have no jurisdiction over me. I demand that you stop this barbaric treatment of me and put me down forthwith.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he continued to stalk through the grass to his mount, eyes fixed to the horizon. “Do shut up, Lady Boadicea.”
Well, he certainly did like to use her words against her, didn’t he? The fight seemed to drain from her then, dispersed by the shock still coursing through her system and her rapidly pounding pulse, which had yet to slow to its normal pace. What was the harm in letting him win one of their battles, she reasoned as she stole another discreet sniff of his person.
Just the one, for there would most assuredly be many more awaiting them.
here must be something wrong with him.
He was pacing a hole through the carpet of the sitting room outside the duchess’s bedchamber as his mother and Lord and Lady Thornton looked on. He didn’t give enough of a damn to stop, regardless of how many dark looks of admonishment his mother sent his way and in spite of the quizzical glances Thornton and his marchioness directed toward him.
Dr. Martindale had been within the chamber with Lady Boadicea for—a consult of his pocket watch revealed—thirty-one minutes and forty-nine seconds. Too bloody long by his estimation. Perhaps the frustrating chit had actually done herself grave injury. If she had, he shouldn’t care more than the natural human inclination to not wish ill upon another.
Why, then, did his chest feel as if it had been seized in the grip of a giant? Why did his heart pound and his palms go damp? Why could he not stop trekking up one end of the chamber and down the other like a bloody lunatic?
He didn’t know. It didn’t make sense. He shouldn’t be worried about her. He shouldn’t care so much that he couldn’t think of anything but her, and what the damn doctor would reveal when he at last came through the door.
Lord knew she’d brought upon her fall with her own rash behavior, and she was the sort of female who had never been checked. He could see that she must have been a handful for her parents, who had likely pawned her off on her sister and Thornton to relieve themselves of the Sisyphean task of getting her to behave. She was all brash, unapologetic energy, going about her life like a gale of wind.
And while everything about her drove him to distraction—the inherent wrongness of her, the blatant disrespect for propriety, the vulgar books, the bright dresses, the tongue that couldn’t be tamed, the lush figure she didn’t bother to hide—yes, while everything about her drove him mad, he had been consumed with fear when he’d cleared the ridge and seen Damask Rose galloping away, rider-less.
That fear had lodged into his chest with the force of an ax blade, and all he’d been able to think about was getting to her. Finding her. Making certain she wasn’t dead. In the frenzied moments of his race across the field to where he’d spotted her fallen form, he had wondered what he would do if he found her dead, neck broken. The sudden anguish within him had been choking.
But she wasn’t dead. Wasn’t even injured, if she was to be believed. Certainly, her rapier wit had not been damaged in the fall. She had flayed him alive with her tongue for the hundredth time in their incredibly abbreviated acquaintance.
“Will you not sit, Bainbridge?” his mother asked yet again in her signature tone that was half disapproval and half rebuke at all times. “You must not overset yourself. Dr. Martindale is seeing to the Harrington chit’s wellbeing.”
“Her title is Lady Boadicea Harrington,” the Marchioness of Thornton said with soft warning. Her flashing blue eyes were not unlike Bo’s, though he couldn’t think them half as lively.
He turned to stalk back across the sitting room, which had been stripped following Millicent’s death and had been redecorated at the sole discretion of his mother. This meant that it was a godawful combination of the gaudy and the severe. There was far too much gilding about, though he took comfort in the fact that the chamber had undergone a complete change. The furniture was old and heavy and looked as if it fit more in the last century than in the current one. His mother’s fondness for mid-century oil pastorals was evidenced on every wall, as was her love of stripes.
“Yes, forgive me as I am quite overset by the recent turn of events and my constitution was not a fortified one to begin with,” his mother said with obvious insincerity. “Bainbridge, do stop pacing. You’re making me seasick.”
He ignored her, pacing to the other end of the chamber. It was either move his legs or give in to the demons trying to claw him apart. Something about seeing Lady Boadicea laid low, something about the turbulence of fear within him, had brought everything down upon him. He longed for a drink, but he would not have one.
Not until he knew she was healthy. And perhaps not even then.
“You should not have brought her here to the duchess’s apartments,” the dowager continued, apparently unimpressed by his refusal to do her bidding. “It is vulgar and improper, Bainbridge. What will our guests think? She is not yet your duchess, and she has no place here.”
“For the final time,” he gritted, “I carried Lady Boadicea in from the servant’s stair so as to attract the least amount of attention. It was either bring her here or carry her the entire way to the west wing where anyone could have seen her and made us both further fodder for gossip.”
And in truth, he hadn’t truly thought. He had been an automaton, bringing her to where she would be safest. To the place where she would ultimately belong in just a few short weeks’ time. If it was odd that he had unerringly carried her to the chambers adjoining his, he didn’t wish to dwell on that just now.
“This will bring gossip,” his mother predicted with a pinched expression before muttering beneath her breath, “and a Harrington girl, of all things. How could you have been so reckless, Bainbridge? After all that this family has endured?”
Dear God. His mother was inca
pable of comprehending the concept of sotto voce. He knew that she didn’t just speak of his impetuousness in bringing Lady Boadicea to the duchess’ suite but in touching her that first day. And it was simple: he had no explanation. None. Lady Boadicea Harrington wreaked havoc upon his body, mind, and soul.
Lady Thornton, of course, heard every word his mother spoke. She stiffened, her expression hardening with disapproval. “Your Grace, I am a Harrington girl as well, and proud to be so. Your choice of words insults me and my sister both, and I’ll not stand for it as she lies in the adjacent chamber, perhaps grievously injured from her fall.”
His mother raised a brow. “Indeed. We must all be proud of something, must we not? Even the lowest among us must find something with which to be satisfied. I daresay even the scullery maid can. There cannot be insult in truth, can there? And as for Lady Boadicea’s injuries, from what I understand, she brought them on herself by behaving the hoyden.”
He gritted his teeth. Where the hell was Martindale? He feared he would need to intervene to keep the Marchioness of Thornton from delivering his mother the slap she so richly deserved.
Who to defend, his mother or his betrothed? Both were in the wrong. One had birthed him. One he didn’t know what the devil to do with. Here in this stuffy chamber—interminably small, abominably decorated—he felt as if his clothing had all grown too tight. Particularly his neck cloth. Discord and confrontation tended to affect him that way, making his temples pound, his head swim, and his heart thump, ever since Millicent’s death.
But he could not, would not, think of that now. Not in this moment, with worry for Lady Boadicea eating him alive and three sets of eyes watching him as though he may be a candidate for the nearest lunatic asylum. He made his choice in the next instant.
“Mother,” he said with care, “you pay Lady Boadicea a grave disservice. Apologize at once for the insult.”
His mother stared, brows flying to her hairline, forehead creasing with a series of deep grooves wrought by age and judgmental living. “Your Grace?”
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