“No of course, that’s not what I meant. You think you can get away with this act of yours, play upon my sympathies,” he murmured.
“I’m well aware that you possess none of those.”
He groaned in frustration. “What is so damned vital about that book that you would shove it down your drawers?”
“Just get it over with,” she challenged. “I dare you.”
“You dare me, do you? You little terror. I should. I should just do it,” he said, his words more certain than the querulous, bemused tone he’d used to say them. His chest heaved with exertion as he hovered over her, clearly torn.
Awareness flooded her once more. He was so close, so warm, so pleasant-smelling, she could drown in him and be lost forever.
She tossed her head, trying to shake out her mutinous thoughts, and squirmed beneath him. This was a mistake, for he caught her by the wrists and pinned her hands above her head with effortless ease. He held her in place with one hand and lowered his other.
“You aren’t …”
“You leave me no choice, Miss Honeywell,” he said in a strangled voice.
His hand touched an ankle, gripped the edge of her skirts. She squeezed her eyes shut. This couldn’t be happening.
“Montford,” she warned, trying to recover her senses. “Montford … Oh!”
His fingers skimmed past her stocking, which had fallen down around her boot, then up her leg. She felt his fingers touch the hem of her pantaloons gathered at her knee, and it just stopped there, hovering.
She dared to crack one eye open. Why had he stopped? What was he doing?
His head was bent into his chest, his eyes were closed tighter than hers. He seemed to be in some sort of physical pain, judging from the anguished expression on his face.
Neither of them breathed for several seconds
Then his hand began to move, gliding past her knee, his fingers trailing paths of exquisite fire up her thighs. His touch was slow, languorous, caressing. Scorching. Her breath hitched in her throat. Good heavens, she was on fire.
She must have made some sort of noise, for his eyes flew open. He stared down at her with eyes that smoldered as much as his fingers. Agony gripped his features, and something else that made her heart thud against her breastbone, half in fear, half in triumph.
He desired her.
And God help her, she desired him.
Somehow, his other hand slipped down her body and up her other leg. She felt two sets of fingers running up her thighs, drifting over her hips, caressing and squeezing her flesh with a greedy impatience that left her breathless.
His body lowered onto hers, the hard, heavy length of him pinning her to the floor. His hands roamed up and down her legs, and a groan escaped from the back of his throat, reverberating through her entire body.
She raised a hand to his face without realizing what she was doing, felt the smooth-shaven flesh of his cheek, the tangle of hair falling over his temple. It was as soft as silk. “Montford,” she whispered.
He rested his forehead against her own, his lips a mere hair’s breath from her own. His breath was hot and frantic against her skin. “Why are you not screaming?” he whispered. “Do you have no sense? Do you think I’ll stop?”
She hadn’t considered such weighty questions. She hadn’t considered anything at all since around the time his hand had touched her leg.
“You impudent little baggage. Shoving a book up your skirts …” He made a strangled sound. “As if that would deter me! You have no idea what I want to do to you right now.”
He ground his hips into her own, and there was no mistaking the hard ridge of his desire jutting into her tender flesh despite the layers of fabric between them. She knew enough of the barnyard to know what that meant. But she had not known it would feel so stunningly wonderful.
She moaned and shut her eyes.
He bit out a curse. The movement of his hands abruptly stopped, and he sat back, leaving her feeling oddly bereft on several counts. For one, her mutinous body had not wanted him to leave. For another, he now held the book in his hands.
She didn’t know which made her angrier.
He clutched the book to his chest like she had done earlier and sat back with a thud on his behind. He looked as if he had been through a mill, cravat askew, hair flying every which way, jacket and breeches crumpled beyond compare. His chest heaved and his face was flushed. His eyes surveyed her as he would survey some rare species of poisoned flora. He swallowed several times without speaking.
Then he seemed to come out of his trance. He looked down at his book, looked up at her, looked down, then up again, and that smug grin she was really coming to hate broke across his lips.
Astrid, who had been too stunned to do anything other than lie there, her skirts lifted nearly to her knees, her head too dizzy to hold up after his furtive caresses and hungry words, was knocked back to her senses when she saw that gloating smile on his lips.
She bolted upright, humiliation and shame flooding her in one giant wave. He had clearly tried to seduce her in order to win back the book. And it had worked. So well she had forgotten about the book somewhere in the middle of all the touching and panting.
What a prize idiot she was! To have believed he had wanted her! To have let him touch her! Despite what anyone accused her of, she was not some common tart, to be groped and pawed by this overbred oaf. Why, she hadn’t even been kissed in her life.
He hadn’t even kissed her during the proceedings of the last quarter hour.
Not that she had wanted him to.
Oh, whom was she fooling? Of course she had wanted him to. Which was precisely the problem. She had wanted him to kiss her since that business on the ladder. And she had definitely wanted him to do more than kiss her when he had her pinned beneath him. Which he had done. He had molested her. Thoroughly.
How dare he!
“How dare you!” she cried, launching herself at him.
She managed to get a handful of his hair in her fist and yank it, and he managed to do the same to her hair, still holding on to the book.
“Ouch, you beast!”
“You minx!”
“Ogler!”
“Strumpet!”
They were in the midst of a hair-pulling contest, when a voice in the doorway caught their attention.
“Your Grace!”
They froze and turned towards the door. It was Montford’s driver, the burly Liverpudlian, and behind him hovered a very pale-looking Roddy. Both of their eyes were as wide as the doorway.
She and the Duke simultaneously jumped to their feet, released each other’s hair, then moved as far away from each other as the room allowed. Montford tugged on his jacket and smoothed back his disordered coiffure, squaring his shoulders.
As if that would recover his lost dignity.
He cleared his throat. “What is it, Newcomb?”
“Er … We can come back later if you’re … engaged,” the man said, deadpan, but with mischief twinkling deep in his eyes.
“I was … just concluding my … business with Miss Honeywell,” Montford answered, tucking the book into his lapel.
She snorted and tossed back her hair.
Newcomb’s eyes turned in her direction speculatively, then back at his master. He shrugged, as he had the day before, as if the matter were none of his concern.
“Miss Honeywell!” Roddy cried as she stalked towards the door. “Are you…”
“Quite all right, thank you very much, Roddy,” she rushed to say. “The Duke was so gracious as to pull a large…”
“Insect!” the Duke cut in, looking panicked by whatever it was she had been about to say. “Out of her hair. There was an insect in her hair. A poisonous one. With fangs.”
Roddy and Newcomb narrowed their eyes simultaneously but said nothing to contradict the Duke’s utter nonsense.
“You heard him. A poisonous insect with … fangs. I believe it is a new species. Too bad he coshed it with his bo
ot.” She shot him a seething glance.
He glared back. “Yes. Too bad.”
She twitched her skirts into place and started from the room.
“Miss Honeywell,” the Duke called.
She looked over her shoulder.
He patted his jacket, where the book jutted haphazardly from an inner pocket. “We’ll continue our discussion later.”
“Discussion? Is that what we are calling it? Very well, until later. I look forward to it,” she growled.
“Do you indeed, Miss Honeywell?”
The other occupants of the room swung their heads in unison between the two of them, as if following a tennis ball lobbed across the court.
“I do. Indeed.”
“Indeed.”
“Indeed,” she ground out, and stalked from the room before he could have the last word.
Chapter Nine
IN WHICH YET ANOTHER CALAMITY STRIKES RYLESTONE HALL
“DEVIL TAKE it, I shall refuse to go if you insist upon this indecency,” Sir Wesley hissed, grabbing the saddle and jerking it off Astrid’s mare. He staggered under the weight of it and handed it off to a stable boy, then ordered the sidesaddle mounted in its place.
Astrid clutched her riding crop until her knuckles were white and thought about swatting Wesley’s backside with it. “Don’t think you’re going without me,” she ground out.
Wesley was incredulous. “Gads, Astrid, do you think I want to be alone with him? Sinister look in his eye, that one. No, you’re coming with me. But I’ll be demmed if you ride astride.”
“You’re terribly tiresome when you’re being an old stick,” Astrid muttered.
Wesley looked mightily offended. “I’m being sensible. Not only of your reputation, but your family’s. Montford already thinks very ill of you, I reckon. No need to tear about the countryside astride as if you were…”
“Boadicea?”
Wesley nodded, scratched his scalp. “Yes, rather. Or was it Lady Godiva?”
“Both used their mounts in a shocking manner. I rather think I am in good company.”
“If you were a Hun,” Wesley retorted.
Astrid heaved an exaggerated sigh as Princess Buttercup was fitted with the dreaded sidesaddle. “Fine. You win. But if I fall and break my neck, it is on your head, Wesley Benwick,” she warned, poking him in the ribs with her crop.
Wesley looked satisfied with her acquiescence and stepped out of range of her whip to greet the Duke, who strode into the stables, tugging on his riding gloves impatiently. His top boots gleamed in the sun, his hat uncreased and spotless. He wore a habit of bottle green wool, cut to emphasize every hard plane of his shoulders and arms, and a pair of dun colored breeches that fit his long, powerful legs like a second skin. The only evidence of his valet’s defection was a certain air of neglect about the folds of his cravat. Astrid took satisfaction in this imperfection and could only wish the rest of his rigidly regimented toilette suffered the same fate as it had the two days previous.
The Duke stopped when he noticed her standing next to Wesley, and a muscle worked in his jaw. A sign he found her company as unwelcome as she did his. But he didn’t seem surprised to see her there, even though he had not invited her to join him and Wesley on their tour of the estate this morning. There was no chance Astrid was going to allow Wesley to go unaccompanied on such an expedition, as she could imagine all sorts of blunders her cousin would fall into if left alone with Montford.
It was clearly Montford’s intention to see that this happened. Or at least to goad her past all measure. She knew he knew perfectly well that Wesley hadn’t the first clue about the estate. When he had asked Wesley – or “Anthony Honeywell” – to ride out with him to reconnoiter Rylestone, he’d done so at breakfast in her presence, never taking his intense gaze off of her. Wesley had spluttered, hedged, then finally assented to the trip because he could do no less. Astrid had shoved her eggs about her plate and refused to meet the Duke’s daring glance. It was the first time she’d seen him since the Incident In The Library of the day before, and every time she so much as glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye, she remembered his hands upon her and the heat and smell and strength of him, and she wanted to die of mortification.
Horrid man – he may have been a Duke, but he was no gentleman despite his fine clothes.
She recognized his command to be shown the estate for what it was: a gauntlet thrown down at her feet. Instead of exposing Wesley for a fraud, the Duke seemed determined to play some sort of game with them all. She was not going to let him win, even if she had no bloody clue what the game was any more. He had the book now. He must see how she had cheated him, so there was no need to drag things out with a tour. He was bent on torturing everyone. Even, it seemed, himself, by remaining a further day at Rylestone. Whatever he was planning to do to them, she wished he would just get on with it.
And some absurd part of her wished she could convince him that her management of the estate had not been folly. She wished to make him understand and – dare she hope – appreciate her methods. Rylestone Green was prosperous, its people fat and satisfied, and it was because of her reforms.
He would be a fool to interfere, in her humble opinion.
“Miss Honeywell. What a surprise to see you here,” the Duke murmured, sounding not a whit surprised. “Riding into town?”
“Stuff,” she sniffed. “You know very well I am accompanying you.”
He arched a brow. “Are you indeed?”
“Indeed.” She winced, recollecting similar words spoken last afternoon.
The Duke scanned her from top to toe in an impertinent manner, then dismissed her from notice as Mick presented him with his mount, Cyril, Astrid’s roan gelding and the prize of the Honeywell’s stables. Astrid had felt very peculiar about allowing the Duke to ride her baby, but she couldn’t very well put him on Twinkle, the old piebald dray who pulled their cart, even though she would have loved to do just that.
The Duke scanned the horse in much the same way he had scanned her. She gritted her teeth as he stroked the roan’s nose with his long gloved fingers.
“Fine bit of horseflesh, what?” Wesley babbled nervously.
The Duke nodded noncommittally. “I expect he’ll do.”
“Name’s Cyril,” Wesley continued.
The Duke abruptly stepped away from the horse. “I beg your pardon?”
“His name is Cyril.”
The Duke looked pained and muttered something under his breath. Apparently, he did not approve.
Could nothing please this man?
“What’s wrong with Cyril?” she demanded, striding forward and petting the roan’s head soothingly, as if to assuage his hurt feelings.
“I beg your pardon?” he repeated.
“It’s a fine name.”
He blinked at her several times. “You like the name, Mss Honeywell?” he asked as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears.
“Of course I do. I named him myself.” She shot him a glare over Cyril’s head. “I shouldn’t have told you that, for now you are sure to loathe it.”
“No, I …” The Duke faltered and searched her face earnestly. “I’ve never encountered someone who actually liked the name Cyril.”
“Well, I do. I happen to like it very much,” she said.
“I’m not terribly fond of it,” Wesley chimed in. “One of them names like Nigel or Reginald that makes you wonder what their parents were thinking.”
Astrid glared at her cousin’s attempt to defect to the Duke’s side. The Duke, surprisingly, glared at Wesley as well.
“Piffle,” she declared. “Cyril’s the name of kings and saints. In Greek, it’s the word for lord and master. It’s a good, strong name. Like Cyril here. Doubtless you have thirty-seven stables full of fine horses, Your Grace, but that doesn’t mean Cyril isn’t as good as any of them.”
She caught the Duke’s glance as she finished her lecture and was completely knocked off balance by what she found.
The tense, austere planes of his face had softened, his mouth had gone slack, and his eyes glowed bright with bemusement and something that looked very much like longing.
Her body responded to his expression, a wash of heat spreading from her core into her extremities. She felt her face flame.
As if roused from a daydream, the Duke’s brow furrowed with suspicion. “You’re not grousing me, are you?”
His words were as effective as a dousing of cold water. She stiffened and scowled at him. “Grousing about what?”
“The name. Cyril.”
“Why ever would I?” She didn’t wait for a response. She turned and stalked towards Princess Buttercup. “Are we going out, or are we to stay here all day discussing word etymologies?”
She scrambled onto the mounting block and plopped down upon her seat. Buttercup started forward nervously, and she nearly slid off the opposite side, unused to the precarious slope of the saddle.
She heard a smothered laugh and turned to Wesley to give him an earful. But Wesley was leading his black gelding into the stable yard. She swung her attention towards the Duke and found that he was the one responsible for the laugh.
He was actually smirking at her.
“Like to see you try to ride sidesaddle,” she muttered, prodding Buttercup forward.
The Duke mounted Cyril effortlessly and soon caught up to her outside. “All ladies of quality ride sidesaddle as if born to it,” he said, leaning towards her confidentially.
“You are doubtless insulting me, but I don’t care,” she said, squirming on her seat.
“You don’t? Whyever not?” He sounded mildly curious and entirely pompous, and just looking at him made her want to smack him across the cheek with her whip.
“Because I take satisfaction in knowing I could outrace you any day,” she asserted.
“What makes you so sure of that?” Now he sounded amused, which made her even angrier.
“Call it intuition,” she bit out.
“I think it more a case of hubris. You couldn’t match me.”
“Is that what you think?”
The Duke's Holiday Page 13
