The Wild One

by Danelle Harmon

  ~~~~

  Gareth slept well past supper, not only because his body needed the healing rest, but because large quantities of Irish whiskey were enough to lay even the most debauched of English gentlemen low.

  When he opened his eyes late that evening, the shadows were gathering, the room was still, and a figure sat in silhouette by the dying light of the far window.

  "Ah. So the gallant hero awakes."

  Gareth swore and rubbed his eyes. "Lucien."

  "Feeling better, I hope?"

  "I feel fine." He yawned, stretched with lazy, all-the-time-in-the world abandon, and suddenly snapped to attention as he remembered. "Where is she?"

  Lucien swept his arm to indicate the many bouquets that seemed to grow from every flat surface in the room. "Where is whom?"

  "Don't play games with me, you know damned well whom I'm talking about."

  "Ah, you must mean Miss Paige. Why, she's downstairs in the Gold Parlour with Nerissa and Andrew, playing with Charlotte. Tsk, tsk, Gareth. Did you think I had sent her away?"

  "And why wouldn't I think it? You will."

  A smooth, benign grin. "Perhaps."

  "Oh, and what is your twisted, self-serving game this time, eh?" Gareth muttered, sitting up and pressing the heel of his hand to his pounding head. "To see how quickly you can intimidate her into leaving? Frighten her into turning tail and fleeing back to Boston? Or perhaps it's something worse."

  The duke raised his brows, all feigned innocence and surprise. "Why, Gareth. You wound me with your distrust and lack of faith in me. I am not such a monster as all that. In fact, I even brought you tea."

  "You play with people's minds, Lucien. I'll not have you doing so with hers."

  "My dear boy, I plan nothing of the sort." He flicked a bit of dust off his sleeve of black velvet. "Besides, the girl is not so easily frightened. You know that yourself."

  "You can't send her away."

  "I will if I have to."

  "I won't allow it."

  "You'll have no choice. I am not blind, Gareth. I see how quickly you defend her, and I suspect you half-fancy her already — as you do anything with two legs and a skirt. Now, don't get me wrong. I quite like the chit. Miss Paige is a fine woman, blessed with both beauty and courage, but she is a base-born rustic, and you are the heir-presumptive to a dukedom — much as I rue that unhappy fact every day of my waking life." He gave a dramatic, exaggerated sigh. "Oh, how I wish Andrew was in line to inherit, instead of you...."

  "Don't lecture me, Lucien. I'm not in the mood to hear it."

  "Of course you're not. You never are, are you? But here's something for you to think about whilst you're lying in bed, playing up your little scratch and enjoying the undeserved fruits of hero worship." He ignored Gareth's curses. "Whether or not I send Miss Paige away, my dear boy, depends on you."

  "What the devil are you talking about?"

  Lucien's voice lost its mocking tone and hardened. "You know how I felt about Charles's wish to marry someone so far beneath him, and you can guess how I feel about any possible romantic attraction you might have for the girl, as well. I will allow her and the babe to remain at Blackheath. But should I see you staring after her when she leaves a room, or nipping at her heels like a lovesick puppy, I will send her away." Again, that infuriatingly benign smile. "For your own good, of course."

  "Damn you, Lucien, you've no business telling me what I can or cannot do, I'm three and twenty, not fifteen!"

  "Which brings me to the second half of my conditions."

  "As if this isn't enough!"

  "It isn't." The duke rose to his feet, cool, composed, infuriatingly unruffled. Gareth saw that he was holding a vase of flowers, which he had apparently brought upstairs with him. "As you've just said yourself, my dear boy, you are three and twenty now. Not fifteen. It's time your behavior reflected the age of your body, not your brain."

  Gareth swore once more. Not this discussion again.

  "I will see behavior from you befitting an educated young nobleman in line for a dukedom," Lucien continued, smoothly. "No more stupid stunts, immature pranks, drunken loutishness, or other nonsense. Put one foot wrong, Gareth, and I warn you: The girl goes. Do you understand me?"

  Lucien's black gaze bored through the darkness into Gareth's.

  "Go to hell," Gareth muttered sullenly, looking away.

  "Good. I see that you do understand. Good night, then. And here" — he plunked down the vase he still held in one hand — "have some flowers."