Actually, the situation did not look too promising even for a seasoned soldier like himself. They had no source of light, save the ring of it in which they stood. On closer inspection of the stone walls around them he spied a tunnel leading deeper into the cave. It might lead them to safety. It could also lead to dangerous drop-offs and cave-ins as well.
The soft tapping of a foot on the cave’s stone floor awakened him from his determination of their options. Miss Formsby-Smythe, one elegant hand perched on her hip, stared at him expectantly. She reminded him of his old governess when she had caught him and Julius daydreaming instead of conjugating Latin verbs. Julius. He rubbed his fist against his chest.
“Are you in pain, Your Grace?” In two steps, she was beside him, her delicate fingers on his arm. Such compassion on her face as to make his heart twist in a new and more dangerous way.
“Not at all, Miss Formsby-Smythe. I have simply devised a strategy to deal with our current dilemma,” he said briskly.
Going to the wreckage of the fallen phaeton, he retrieved the seat cushion and a woolen blanket stored beneath it. God bless the staff at Winfield Abbey. Rain began to fall from the hole overhead. He retreated into the shadows, away from the opening, and found a reasonably flat rock on which to settle the seat cushion. With a courtly bow, he opened the blanket as if to wrap it around her. She gawped at him like he had recently escaped Bedlam.
“This is your great plan?” she asked incredulously. “We are simply going to sit here?”
“We are indeed. We will sit here, out of the rain, and wait for someone from the house to come and rescue us.”
“But… but… This is utterly ridiculous. You are a soldier. A master strategist. You said so yourself. Good Lord, no wonder you are no longer in the cavalry.”
Addy continued to mutter about soldiers and idiots and rainstorms as she moved around the walls in search of a place to climb out. He had already assessed the climbing option. The walls were smooth as polished marble and the spots where one might find a hand-hold were well above even his nearly six-and-a-half-foot height.
Marcus went to her and wrapped her in the blanket. When his hands came to rest on her shoulders, she raised her head to look into his face like a frightened child. “Addy, it will be fine. The horses will go straight home. My mother will undoubtedly turn the entire estate and village out in search of us. We will be easier to find if we sit still.”
She nodded mutely and allowed him to lead her back to the seat cushion. They sat down on it, side by side. He wrestled out of his jacket and laid across her legs.
“Besides, I really don’t relish the idea of wandering about Yorkshire’s underground caves with a woman who insists on asking me if we are lost every few minutes.”
“Every few… Oh…” She had the good grace to look properly chagrined. “I suppose I deserve that, Your Grace. Will you —”
“Apology accepted. And I really do wish you would call me Marcus, for I fully intend to call you Addy. It suits you, you know.”
Oblivious to the effect it had on him, she peered at him from under gold-tipped lashes.
“If I allow you to call me Addy, will you kiss me again, Marcus?”
No villain in a French dungeon could plot a more cruel torture than this. “Not a good idea, Addy.” The words came out somewhat strained.
“Pity.” She rested her head on his shoulder. “You are very good at it, you know.”
“I am? I mean—how do you know?” The idea of another man kissing Addy before him had his hands closing into fists. What the devil?
“A woman knows.” She pushed a long lock of hair over her shoulder. “Perhaps I should not have told you.”
“Why ever not?” Marcus asked. He put his arm around her shoulders. “I rather like the idea.”
“You would,” she said as she snuggled closer. “Your arrogance does not need further encouragement.”
“Arrogance? What arrogance? I will have you know I am the soul of humility and good cheer.”
The storm was beginning to rage above them. Oddly enough it didn’t concern Marcus at all.
“You would not know humility if you walked naked through Hyde Park at five o’ clock in the afternoon, Marcus Winfield.”
“I would, however, be of good cheer,” he assured her.
“You and every lady fortunate enough to be in the park at that hour.”
“Miss Formsby-Smythe,” he said in perfect imitation of any ton gentleman full of his own consequence. “I am shocked you believe me of such easy virtue.”
He could not see her now, as the light had gone with the storm, but her shoulders shook with laughter. Holding a laughing Adelaide in the dark was one of the finest in Marcus’s experience of late. Perhaps one of the finest ever.
“Don’t worry, Marcus,” she said. “Your virtue is safe with me.”
“Damn.” He shook his head in mock sorrow. “Pity, that.”
Her breath wisped across his sleeve in an exaggerated sigh. “Indeed.”
“I daresay there shall be enough of a scandal without it once we are rescued.” He liked her head resting on his shoulder.
“Do you really think so, Marcus? How splendid. I’ve always wanted to be scandalous.”
“Good God.” Scandal. The word kept him awake most the night.
*
The ballroom is exquisite. From the parquet floor to the heavy gold and crystal chandeliers loaded with beeswax candles, it is perfection. The perfect room in the perfect house on the perfect night. She glides along the upper railing, admiring the splendor. As she stops at the top of the stairs, Adelaide is equally perfect, in her flowing white gown with its matching beaded dancing slippers.
Only the presence of the man she loves can make this evening complete. As the orchestra begins the first waltz, he steps to the bottom of the stairs to meet her. Major Marcus Winfield, handsome and dashing in his dress uniform, holds out his hand in a silent request for this dance. A request Adelaide floats down those stairs to answer.
When he takes her in his arms she is breathless with joy and anticipation. They dance so beautifully together the other dancers leave the floor to watch. His smile is so bright it nearly blinds her. His green eyes glow with love and admiration for her alone. It is the most thrilling night of her life. She wishes the dance could last forever. Nothing will ever tarnish the golden magic of this moment. He looks down into her adoring upturned face and opens his mouth to speak.
“Good God, woman, you snore like an infantryman.”
Adelaide awoke with a violent start. The violence was actually a somewhat gentle shaking by a less than dashing looking Duke of Selridge. If not for the completely uncalled for remark about her snoring, she might have been able to muster a little sympathy for his bleary eyes and completely disheveled appearance.
“I, sir, am a lady. And a lady never snores.” She gave what she hoped was a haughty toss of her head. However, it was difficult to maintain one’s dignity when dressed in the dirty, torn clothes in which one had slept. Adelaide was grateful she could not see her hair. Free of its pins and braids it must look a fright.
“The women with whom I sleep are seldom ladies, so I would hardly know.” Marcus stretched, bending his body in an attempt, no doubt, to work out the stiffness born of sleeping on a rock in a damp cave. He was also favoring his bad leg this morning. “You, however, my dear Adelaide, may well be the source of our rescue. Half of Yorkshire heard you snoring, even above last night‘s storm.”
“Really,” Adelaide snapped. “I would prefer not to hear about your sleeping arrangements, if it’s all the same to you. And as to my purported somnolent noises—”
He chuckled and retrieved his jacket from the cave floor. “You really are a bluestocking, aren’t you? No one, save a bluestocking, resorts to using a word like ‘somnolent’ when confronted with an ugly truth.”
Struggling to rise amid the tangle and weight of her skirts, Adelaide blew her hair out of her face. She fully intended
to give him a lesson in manners, if she ever gained her feet. She might eventually forgive him for the snoring remark. Interrupting her wonderful dream, however, fell irrevocably into the realm of the unforgivable. Of course, one look at his handsome face, his eyes alive with purpose and his lips pursed in contemplation; and she knew she would forgive him anything.
“What time is it do you think?” He went through the pockets of his jacket for the second time. “It is fully light out. Well past sunrise.” Here stood the soldier again, save for the rifling of his own pockets, gauging the situation and deciding what the day would bring.
Whatever happened, this man managed it. Well. She knew that about him. She had probably known it from her first glimpse of him in a very real ballroom. It seemed like such a long time ago.
She drew a much-rumpled letter from beneath her skirts and offered it to him. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
Like the hawk she’d imagined him to be earlier he latched onto it, first with his eyes and then with his strong fingers. He turned it over a few times before tucking it into the pocket of the jacket he’d donned. “Thank you,” he said absently. A thousand questions lurked in his expression. Or perhaps, one.
“I didn’t read it. It was too dark.” She turned on one side to tug yards of dirty muslin from beneath her hip.
“Of course, you didn’t.” His predatory stare had her craving a bit of cheese.
“And I have no interest in reading a letter from one of the ‘seldom ladies’ with whom you keep company.” She hoisted herself up, to tumble gracelessly back into the dirt.
“What are you attempting to do?” he asked as she flopped back down for the third time.
“I am trying to gain my feet. If you were any sort of gentleman, you would help me instead of remarking on my unfortunate snoring problem. Or asking me the time when you are far more likely to deduce it than I.” She snatched the tangled hems of her tattered skirt and petticoats from around her ankles.
With a grin far too knowing for her tastes, he reached for her hands and pulled her to her feet as if she weighed nothing at all. When she swayed slightly, he put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. His eyes caught hers in a snare of green flame. Heat washed over her. His hands wandered down her back and curled around her waist. Her breath caught as he slowly leaned down.
Hallooo? Is there anyone there?” a disembodied voice came from somewhere a little beyond the overhead ring of sky.
What looked suspiciously like regret passed over Marcus’s face. He spun on his heel and limped into the light, squinting at the brightness of the sun.
“Thank God,” he shouted. “Puddlesby? Throw down a rope, man. Get us out of here.”
“Is that you, Your Grace?”
“Of course, it is, Puddlesby. Who else would it be?”
A somewhat red-cheeked Puddlesby leaned over the edge of the hole and smiled. “Quite so, Your Grace. Is the young lady with you? Oh, yes, I see her. We’ll have you out in a trice.”
As Puddlesby, the steward of his Yorkshire estate at Winfield Abbey, set about engineering their rescue, Marcus sneaked a quick, intent glance at his companion. When she caught him, he cleared his throat and looked away. There was no question of continuing their friendship. Better she learn now, before the rest of the world surrounded them and they went their separate ways. If it made so much sense, why did he want to punch someone?
“For goodness sake, what did Puddlesby think you had done with me, Your Grace?” she asked in a tone suggestive of laughter lurking barely beneath the surface.
“What? Oh, I cannot fathom it, Miss Formsby-Smythe. Perhaps you should ask him when we reach the surface.”
Her features took on a wounded aspect. His frigid tone and refusal to rise to the bait had startled her. It was just as well. The crisis of the accident had drawn them together. His withdrawal was for the best, her best at least.
The war had changed him, and not for the better. He had to maintain control—of his life and of his self—or risk becoming a cruel, heartless beast. A beast who lashed out at those he loved, wounding them without a thought to the damage he did, to them or to himself. She’d led the cosseted life of a gentleman’s daughter which left her incapable of defending herself against that sort of rage.
No, if he must marry, let it be to a woman who was incapable of provoking him—to anger or to passion—a woman who would stir nothing in him—neither love, nor hate. The woman who, even now, looked at him in uncharacteristic bewilderment stirred too much in him and stretched his fragile control to its limit. For her own good and his hard-won control, he had to let her go. Why, then, did the thought of Adelaide leaving trouble him so?
“If you will excuse me, Your Grace,” Adelaide began, reminding him of his old governess again. “Whilst you continue your brown study, I would like to make use of this rope and get out of here. I am more than a little eager to see civilization again.” She grabbed the rope, which had dropped from above, and had climbed several feet of it before he could stop her. When she began to slip, he grasped her around the waist and snatched her down.
“What do you think you are doing?”
“Saving your life, Miss Formsby-Smythe. The same way I saved it yesterday.”
“Had you been a bit quicker yesterday, we would not be in this mess, would we?” She went for the rope again. He held it out of her reach.
“What mess would that be?”
She stared at him and scowled. “You know very well what mess. We have spent the night together and now you are worried you will have to marry me. That is why you are being so disagreeable. Had you not driven us into this hole there would be nothing for you to worry about, would there? Now you have managed to nearly kill me and worse ruin my reputation in the bargain.”
There was no doubt in his mind the servants who had come to rescue them were poised on the rim of the opening to listen for all they were worth.
“I am terribly sorry, Miss Formsby-Smythe, but your reputation was the least of my worries when I saved you from falling to your death. Which would you rather be—dead and respectable or alive and ruined?” She opened her mouth to speak, but he was not finished. “Might I remind you I am not the one who came on an outing with an unmarried man without a chaperone?” His destructive temper forced him to treat her cruelly. He did it to protect her. The pain and confusion on her face cut far deeper than a Frenchman’s saber. He suspected he’d carry the scar far longer as well.
“I wonder, Your Grace, had there been a chaperone with us, and you had only enough time to save one of us, which you would have chosen.”
“That would depend, Miss Formsby-Smythe.”
“On what?”
“On whether the chaperone snored like a French cannon barrage and is of a worse disposition than you in the morning.”
An explosive, exasperated “oooh” was his first and last warning before she snatched the rope from his hand. With furious jerking motions, Addy then proceeded to tie the rope under her arms in a series of knots.
“Might I remind you, Your Grace, there was no maid willing to come with us. Apparently, the servants at Winfield Abbey were more informed about your abysmal driving than I was. If you will remember it was your mother’s idea for us to venture out without a chaperone. She said the estate was so remote if we took the cart paths no one would see us.”
“She was certainly right about that.” He reached for the rope. She stepped away. “If someone had seen us perhaps we would not have been forced to spend the night together.”
“No one is more sorry about that than I.” She tugged on the rope. When the servants attempted to raise her, the knots did not hold.
Despite her dignified expression and icy tone, he sensed her puzzlement and dismay. He set to work fashioning a harness of the length of rope. She stood in noisome silence as he fastened the harness around her. Somewhere in that pretty little head he was being given the tongue-lashing of a lifetime.
“The servants are discreet,
Addy. So long as we keep silent about this, all will be well.” She maintained her tight-lipped silence. “You have certainly had an adventurous stay in Yorkshire.” His attempt at levity did not have the desired effect.
“I would think you would be glad, Your Grace.” She was magnificent in her disdain. “You do not strike me as the sort to tolerate idleness. The life of a duke must be exceedingly boring to a man like you.”
“It was until you arrived, Miss Formsby-Smythe.”
Once he insured its security, he tugged the rope to signal their rescuers. Marcus watched her rise into the light. Something inexpressibly precious was slipping away.
“Addy?” he called out almost before he knew it.
“Yes, Your Grace?” She spoke as primly as if she were seated in his mother’s drawing room.
“My name is Marcus. I’d be obliged if you’d use it.” There he was again, the blathering schoolboy. His chagrin turned to warmth when Addy smiled.
“As you are a duke and the one man to ever drop me into a great bloody hole, I guess I shall be forced to oblige you, Marcus.”
“Addy, your language. Wherever did you learn such a word?”
“Why from you, Marcus. Where else?” His laughter followed after her as his servants pulled her to safety.
*
Once they arrived back at Winfield Abbey, Adelaide had little chance to catch her breath, let alone to sort out Marcus’s myriad changes of temperament. For that matter, her father’s behavior was equally difficult to comprehend. Her mother’s nearly hysterical welcome, complete with tears, shrieks, and bone-crushing embraces did not surprise Adelaide in the least. Henrietta Formsby-Smythe’s emotional displays were legend among the ton.
Her father always proved more trying to read. Even so, his reserve in addressing her was rather more strained than usual, especially considering the circumstances. She was, after all, his daughter and had been missing for an entire night. The dark looks he gave Marcus added to the puzzle.
Lost In Love (Road To Forever Series #1) Page 3
