“It’s Sampson,” the boy answered. “He’s gone missing.”
She felt her stomach sink, for here it was, time to face the music that Mrs. Prudence had left her to.
“Missing my arse,” Harry said from somewhere behind her. “My best horse has been stolen, and by your Mrs. Prudence, I might add.”
Mary Elizabeth had to draw a breath to unpack all the nonsense in that sentence before she could respond. Harry was looking fine that morning, wearing no coat with only a fancy waistcoat over his white linen shirt. The waistcoat was a dark-blue silk, and it brought out the blue of his eyes.
She told herself not to be a fool and to attend to the matter at hand.
“Prudence Farthington is not a thief!” Mary Elizabeth said with a bit more emphasis than she intended, but Harry was standing there, looking smug and kissable, which made her want to smack him.
Robbie came into the stables then and stood listening to Harry as if the man were talking sense.
“And yet,” Harry said, his voice a calm, smug contrast to her own vehemence, “my finest horse is missing, and Mrs. Prudence, too, is gone.”
“Your horse? Your horse, is it? Just because you feed him oats does not make Sampson yours.”
“And yet my name on the bill of sale does.”
“Excuse me,” Robbie said, trying to piece together some sense from their conversation and no doubt failing, as she was. “May I ask, are you referring to my Lady Prudence?”
“Yes, Robbie.” Mary Elizabeth turned her back on him dismissively, about to round on Harry again, but Robbie’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“And she stole Sampson for a morning ride you say? Dear God, that horse will kill her.”
“She did not steal him,” Mary Elizabeth repeated slowly, trying to tamp down her temper. “Mrs. Prudence borrowed him, which is a world of difference. No doubt she’s gone to save her brother. She will return Sampson, right as rain, as soon as she comes back from London.”
Robbie took that in and turned as gray as the boy Charlie, who now had hidden behind a stall door. She thought for a moment that her brother might faint at the thought of the peril the woman he loved had put herself in, but before she could help him, Harry stepped in and placed his hand on Robbie’s arm.
“You’ll take my second-fastest horse,” Harry said. “He’s not as swift as Sampson, but then Sampson isn’t likely to run his best for a stranger. She only has a three-hour lead on you, at best. You’ll find her. The north road only runs two ways.”
“I thank you,” Robbie said. “Your Grace might send a carriage behind me. Once I find Mrs. Prudence, we won’t be able to ride all the way to London on horseback.”
Mary Elizabeth felt a headache beginning at the back of her neck at the thought of Robbie running off after Mrs. Prudence on horseback with yet another borrowed ducal coach trailing behind him.
Harry smiled, clearly delighted with himself. “Consider it done. You’d best get on. You’re losing daylight.”
For Robbie to fall in with Harry’s nonsense did not surprise her, but it did add fuel to her inner fire.
“Your Grace, are you?” Mary Elizabeth said, so spitting mad that she almost could not hear herself think. “I’ll be damned if you are.”
Harry’s smile did not waver as Robbie climbed onto Merry’s back and rode away. “Language, Miss Waters, please. My stable hands have delicate ears.”
“Your hands? Since when have you acquired such delusions of grandeur?”
“Your Grace.” The sober, calm head of the stables, Bart, came to Harry’s side, cap in hand. “We’ve prepared the traveling chaise to send after them.”
“Excellent.”
Mary Elizabeth’s head was pounding so now that she could barely see at all. The world was upside down with madness, and no mistake—if Harry was a duke, she was a horse’s ass.
* * *
Harry had not meant to tell her so abruptly, as almost an afterthought. But she knew now, and he could see by the mulish expression on her face that she was not happy about it. Mary Elizabeth did not look to see where her brother had gone but still stood staring straight at him.
“Duke, is it?” she asked.
“It is. Henry Charles Percy, Duke of Northumberland, at your service.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and the silence made him hopeful. Then she grunted, adjusting the knife that she wore at her belt.
“Going to skewer me with that?” he asked.
She looked down at the pearl-handled blade as if she had forgotten it was there. “No,” she answered. “I don’t sully my steel with the blood of liars.”
Harry felt the sting of that and watched her as she walked away from him. She mounted the first horse that came to hand, a blooded sorrel that he had bought for breeding purposes. But neither Mary Elizabeth nor the horse cared a tinker’s damn for the fact that the mount was not there to be ridden. She did not even wait for a saddle but leaped onto the horse’s back and took off at a canter. Harry knew he had to follow her, but he dreaded the strip she was going to tear out of his hide.
The Duke of Northumberland stood alone in his own stables, for his grooms had hidden themselves away, most likely to avoid his wrath as well as Mary Elizabeth’s. But Harry knew well that he had no one to be angry at but himself. He stood in silence, feeling chagrined, when he noticed that he was not alone at all but that her brother Alexander was with him.
“Don’t fret too much, Your Grace,” Alexander said. “Mary has a fierce temper, but she’ll see reason soon enough.”
“I love her,” Harry said, almost inanely, as if the knowledge were a burden he did not know how to set down.
“Of course you do,” Alexander said. “She’s a loveable girl. Just don’t get near her blades until she’s had time to cool off.”
“I only saw one knife,” Harry said.
“That’s because that’s all she wants you to see. She never wears less than three.”
Harry stood in silence, contemplating that fact as he listened to the birdsong outside the stables. He wondered what it would be like to marry a woman who wore no less than three knives on any given day. He contemplated such a fate and started smiling.
“You have your heart set on her.”
Harry met his eyes. “I do.”
“Well, you’re a good man, though you’re a duke. As I’ve said, you have the family’s blessing. But be careful with her. She’s certain that the Highlands are all she’s after.”
“She’s all I’m after,” Harry said. “If I have to follow her all the way to the end of the earth, I will.”
Alexander Waters cocked a brow at him. “You might have to at that.” He swallowed hard. “Your Grace.”
“Call me Harry.”
Alexander smiled then, and this time, it reached his eyes. “All right then. I’m Alex.”
The men shook hands as if meeting for the first time. Harry was shocked at the familiarity, but only a little. He had been around the Waterses a week now, and they were wearing him down. His ducal pretensions were all but dormant where they were concerned.
His mother would be horrified.
Sixteen
Mary Elizabeth did not like herself when she lost her temper. She did not like the headache that came with anger nor the feeling of chagrin once her anger had passed. She did not know why Harry had decided to lie to her, why he was intent on putting on airs that were ridiculous and did not suit him, but she knew that she had to get off the ducal lands before she sank a blade into him. So she took the road back to the village.
It would have been faster by boat, if she’d had one, but as she had only one borrowed horse, a sweet-natured creature whose name she did not know, she took the gravel-lined road all the way to the inn that sat closest to the ducal lands on the north side of the village green. She had no rope to tie her
horse with, so they brought her breakfast outside, that she might eat it under a shade tree and keep her eye on her mount. The even-tempered beast cropped the grass at his feet, happy to be out in the summer morning, for all the world as if he was content to leave the palatial stables behind and never look back.
Mary Elizabeth felt a deep and abiding desire to ride him all the way to Aberdeen, but she knew that the thought was a foolish one, so she put it aside.
She wondered what was wrong with Harry, if perhaps, along with being kin to a duke, he had wandering wits. She did not understand why he thought lying to her about something so important as his identity, even for a moment, would be a good idea. If pretending to be a duke was his idea of a joke, she didn’t like it. But Harry did not seem to be the joking kind.
She knew so little about him, about who he truly was and where he really came from. But that truth did not change the fact that she loved him.
God help her.
She had ordered two breakfasts, for she knew that he would not be far behind her. She was not sure how he did it, but he always seemed to know where she was headed before she did herself. And she was right. In less than ten minutes after she had started sipping at her breakfast tea, Harry rode up on his own mare, which wasn’t saddled either.
“My cattle will get spoiled, riding only bareback,” he said.
She felt her teeth clench as he referred to the ducal horses as if he owned them, but in deference to the peace of the morning, she said nothing. She wanted to eat her breakfast before she spoke with him again.
He seemed to sense something of her resolution, or perhaps he was just a man of few words, for Harry sat beside her and ate the oatcakes and honey that the serving woman brought. They ate in companionable silence, and Mary Elizabeth congratulated herself on her calm. She even began to think that she might be able to ask him why he was lying to her in a civil way when he reached into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a gold guinea to pay for their repast.
“For the love of God, Harry, leave off this nonsense about being a duke,” Mary Elizabeth groused. She took a deep breath and tried to hold on to her temper, even as she felt it rising.
“What do you mean?” Harry asked, as innocent as any babe.
“Tossing gold to folk as if you are the lord of the realm. I like you fine without duke in front of your name.”
Harry smiled and Mary Elizabeth looked away, keeping her gaze focused the dregs of her tea. “You like me fine, do you?”
“Aye. So there’s no need for theatrics,” she said. “As angry as I am with you, I still like you fine.”
“I know you like kissing me.”
Mary Elizabeth felt his gaze on her skin as if he were touching her. She rose to her feet and vaulted onto the back of her new horse. She nudged him with her knees, but the beast did not seem interested in running so much as he was interested in hearing what Harry had to say next. Mary Elizabeth cursed silently under her breath.
“I’m sorry you’re annoyed that I’m a duke, Mary, but it will grow on you. Give it time.”
“Bah!” Mary nudged her mount again, and this time he remembered himself and took off as if he had been shot from a canon. Harry gave pursuit on his own mare, but even when he pulled up beside her, she refused to slow down and continue their idiotic conversation.
“You think I’m lying about being a duke,” Harry said, for all the world as if it were she who had lost her mind and not he who was acting the fool.
Mary Elizabeth got down off her horse and led him to a stream that ran clear close to the road. She let her horse drink his fill, then filled her empty flask. The cool water calmed her temper as she sipped it before handing it to Harry without a word. He looked at it in surprise for a moment, then drank after her.
“I don’t want to discuss it,” Mary Elizabeth said.
“Will you discuss it with my mother?”
“I’ve not met your mother.”
Harry laughed at that, and his laughter was a warm bit of sunlight that crept up her back, up her neck, and into her hair. His laughter was as warm as the touch of his hands had been on her cheek the night before, and she shivered.
“You take tea with her every day, Mary.”
Mary Elizabeth frowned. “You mean you want me to take this nonsense to Her Worship.”
Harry’s lips quirked. “If by Her Worship you mean the duchess, I do.”
Mary Elizabeth sighed. She had no desire to shame him in front of his relations. She opened her mouth to tell him so when his lips descended on hers out of nowhere, stealing her breath. Her reason fled soon after it, and she found herself pressed against his chest, her breasts squished between them in the most pleasurable way as his hands began to roam down her waist to her backside. She reveled in the feel of his hard body against hers, a body that was getting harder by the moment. She shivered and knew for the first time why it was that foolish women threw away their virtue for a farthing. Those women had been kissed by a man like Harry.
When his hands caressed her backside in her buckskin breeches and drew her hard against him so that she could feel just how much of a man he was, cold reason returned like a wave of ocean water, drowning her foolishness and his in one great wave of fury. She jerked away from him and began to writhe, trying desperately to work herself free of his embrace.
It seemed Harry’s mind could not quite catch up with what she wanted, for his body wanted something else altogether. Mary Elizabeth’s traitorous body wanted the same thing, and she cursed him and herself roundly, this time out loud so that he might hear.
At the sound of her vehement blasphemies, Harry let her go as if she were a snake that had bitten him.
“All right, then,” she said, trying hard to rein her temper in. Her new horse could hear the fury in her voice, and he stepped closer to her, getting between her and Harry. She did not chastise him for his insolence, but let him shield her. More to the point, she let him shield Harry, for her blades were close under her hand and she was afraid she might skewer the man she loved with one of them.
“I’ll go to Her Worship and I’ll tell her the nonsense you’ve been spouting. And when she confirms that you are naught but a damned fool who plagues me with lies, we’ll talk again.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed, for it seemed she had reached the end of his good nature. “If you were a man, I’d call you out for that.”
“Don’t let that stop you.”
Harry reached for her again, but she leaped onto her horse and turned his head toward the house. “I’ll turn you over my knee before the sun has set,” Harry promised.
“The devil you will,” Mary Elizabeth responded, feeling her blood rise up at the fact that the man was still challenging her, even now, when any other man of sense would have given up his lies and backed down long ago. She would have respected him if he was not playing her false by handing her a pack of children’s tales, when she had seen the fat, old duke with her own eyes. She would have to break him of this nonsense, here and now, if she had any hope of getting decent children out of him once they were wed.
She nudged her mount and he ran, as he was born to do, but they had not gone twelve lengths before Harry had pulled up beside them, keeping pace. “My knee, Mary,” Harry growled at her. She almost laughed at his idiocy. She would have laughed had she not been so angry.
She wondered how on God’s green earth he could make her want to kiss him and kill him all in the same breath. She breathed deep and set her eyes toward home. She would settle this with the duchess first, and then she would deal with Harry.
Mary Elizabeth found that her ire did not dissipate on the ride back to the duchess’s house, as it usually did. Given even five minutes, Mary Elizabeth often lost the thread of an annoyance in the throes of something more interesting—practice with her rapier or a good knife-throwing session. But even the beauty of that summer day did not stop
her from cradling her fury at Harry next to her heart. Did he think her some kind of simple fool, that she would immediately believe him to be a duke simply because he asked a stable hand or two to go along with this ruse?
And more importantly, why would he think such a ruse necessary? Did he think her the low sort of woman who would be persuaded to marry based on a man’s title and position in the world? What kind of woman would that make her if she were?
Mary Elizabeth had the answer to her question almost with her next breath: an Englishwoman.
By the time she reached the fancy house, she did not even trouble herself to take her horse to the stables and rub him down as she ought to do, but left him with a waiting footman, who clearly had no idea what to do with him. She strode into the house, and Billings let her in. For once, the butler did not raise an eyebrow at the sight of her breeches.
Harry was close on her heels, and when the staid butler followed them into the front hall, looking concerned, Harry said, “That will be all, Billings.”
“Leave off your airs, Harry, for the love of God.”
Billings looked a bit shocked at her outburst, but then, he often looked shocked when she was in the room, so she paid him no mind, but went to find the duchess. She did not have far to look, for she heard the soft sound of feminine laughter coming from the front parlor. Mary Elizabeth strode in without knocking, and Harry stayed with her.
“Your Worship, Harry and I have a matter between us that you need to settle.” Mary Elizabeth spoke without preamble, then noticed that the ladies sitting all around in their soft silks and muslins stared at her as if she were a Highland barbarian down from the mountains to kill them.
Mary Elizabeth sighed and hoped the duchess did not write to her mother about this incident. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound. She bowed to the ladies, making a decent leg, she thought, in her buckskin breeches, but the ladies in the room only tittered, as the duchess raised her quizzing glass.
How to Train Your Highlander Page 11
