A Stroke of Luck (7 page)

The Greeleys, including Zara, waited expectantly.

"I..."

"There's your duties in the House of Lords," helped out Stump.

"Right."

"And then, of course, there are a passel of entertainments each evening," went on the valet. "Balls, routs, concerts, the theatre and all them other fancy affairs. It takes an awful lot of time to keep up appearances as the Distinguished Duke, what with choosin' just the right coat and matching waistcoat. Not to mention the intricate knots of a cravat."

McTavish made a mocking bow. "Well, Your Majesty, in London you may busy yourself with donning your finery and swilling your bubbly, but here you had better be cutting a goodly swath 'o my peat, else it will be a long, cold swim back to you castle."

"Your Majesty—ha, ha, ha!" Perry seemed to be finding the notion greatly amusing. "Perhaps we should call you the King of Spades."

"Ha, ha, ha," chorused Nonny.

The duke became even more tight-lipped, but he refused to dignify the teasing with any further retort. Studiously ignoring the chortles of mirth, he bent his head and took another stab at the spongy turf.

Chapter 4

Impertinent brats!

Fueled by anger and embarrassment, Prestwick dug in with redoubled effort, his blade starting to slice cleanly through the peat. And the young lady was no better, he glowered. He had caught her staring, and no doubt the scrunched look he had glimpsed in the instant before she had turned away had meant to imply she had not liked what she had seen.

Well, the feeling was mutual!

The spade carved out another chunk of peat. He was no happier than she was to have been thrown together by chance and the storm-tossed seas. Indeed, admiration for the Greeley clan's doughty fortitude quickly evaporated in light of their scrappy behavior and outspoken opinions.

Rude, obnoxious hellions!
He deplored bad manners, and theirs were execrable. The enormous hardships they had faced did not excuse such scathing rudeness. Even if they had suffered an injustice at the hands of some relative, they had no right to use him as a scapegoat for the family's misfortunes. Why, it was not as if he were personally to blame for their present predicament.

The duke's frown grew even more pronounced. How dare they imply his was a life of indolent ease! Not all struggles could be measured in physical terms. Not all hardships were marked by sweat and blisters. Sometimes the wounds were far more subtle, and cut far deeper. But that was not something a raw, unrefined country miss and two undisciplined brats might understand.

"Perseus Agamemnon Greeley!"

The sharpness of Zara's tone caused his own head to snap up.

"You should be ashamed of yourself." She had waited until McTavish had returned to his cart before speaking up. "It is both ignorant and ungentlemanly to snigger at someone for trying to learn a new skill, no matter how awkward or amusing the attempts might appear."

The lad's lingering laughter was swallowed in a guilty gulp.

"And despite outward appearances to the contrary, you
are
a gentleman," she added, slanting an oblique glance at Prestwick.

"S-sorry." As Perry's chin had sunk into the folds of his shirt, the word was barely audible.

"That is hardly a proper apology."

Looking thoroughly chagrined, Perry lifted his head and straightened his shoulders. "Your Grace, I beg your pardon for my behavior. It was not well done of me."

The duke hesitated. The stinging rebuke had surprised him just as much as it had Perry, and for a moment he found himself speechless, knocked slightly off balance by hearing his own inner thoughts given voice by such an unexpected ally. But before he could recover, the young lady turned to him,

"And you, sir, might respond to an expression of contrition with a tad more grace."

Hell and damnation!
Once again he had managed to appear a pompous popinjay. The realization caused him to grit out a curt acknowledgement. By her expression, he could see it did nothing to improve her opinion of him.
To the Devil with what she thought!
Throwing down his spade, he stalked to the basket of food and peered under the checked napkin. With great deliberateness, he tore off a hunk of the warm oatmeal bread and crammed it in his mouth.

"No doubt we are all tired and hungry." Though she pointedly avoided looking in his direction, her nose gave a twitch at the toasty aroma that filled the air. "Let us stop for a bite to eat and some rest. Then perhaps we may return to our work in a more productive frame of mind."

None of the others argued with the suggestion.

A strained silence ensued as Zara spread out the small blanket that McTavish had supplied and laid out the simple collation. The plaid wool smelled strongly of horse, and the cheese had acquired a few stray speckles of sawdust, but there were no complaints.

No one had the inclination or the energy to do more than chew, thought Prestwick wryly as he tipped back the jug of cider, then passed it over to his valet. Including himself. He lay back and closed his eyes, aware that he had just engaged in another blatant display of bad manners. Apparently his sense of propriety had come unraveled, along with the seams of his custom made French cuffs.

Perhaps if he were to doze off for just a moment, he would awake to find this was all a horrid nightmare. There would be Studley, plumping his pillows with a cluck of concern and placing the pot of coffee and lumps of sugar within easy reach...

"Your Grace."

It was not the craggy countenance of his butler that he saw as his eyelids snapped open, but a much more unwelcome face. Drat the chit! Must she plague even his sleeping hours?

"Your Grace," she repeated, emphasizing the urgency in her voice with a shake to his shoulder. "Wake up. We can't afford to dawdle any longer if we wish to finish the job by sundown."

"Arrgh." Prestwick sat up with a groan. On flexing his fingers, he felt as if he had aged ten score in the space of ten minutes. "Surely it makes no difference whether we finish today or tomorrow?" he asked irritably. While he was not at all keen on the idea of passing more than one night in the moldering dampness of the stone barn, neither was he anxious to renew his battle with the damn spade.

"But it does! We have lost too much time as it is. I fear—" The young lady bit at her lip.

Fear?
He would not have thought the Admiral of the Amazons would admit to being afraid of anything. Yet the uncertainty that now pooled in her eyes suddenly made her look less like a mythic warrior queen and more like a vulnerable young lady.

"Oh, very well." Ignoring the creaking protests of his sore limbs, Prestwick levered to his feet. "However, if I am to slave on your behalf, I should prefer not be jeered at or insulted every step of the way."

"Fair enough," she agreed.

He reached for the spade, but she snatched it away. "I shall take my turn."

His eyes narrowed and he wondered whether despite her agreement she was making a subtle mockery of his efforts.

The answer was evident in the tilt of her chin. "That is only equitable," she explained. "I made the deal, and fair is fair. I don't expect you to do more than your share of the hard work."

So it was a prickly pride, and not some baser emotion, that had prompted her demand. That presented a ticklish problem. It was, of course, out of the question to allow a female to engage in such backbreaking work, yet further remonstrance would likely do naught but spark another heated quarrel.

Drawing in a deep breath, Prestwick held out his hand. "As the King of Spades, I demand the return of my subject."

A twitch of humor tugged at her lips. "Surely you don't wish a closer acquaintance with—"

"On the contrary. And the Monarch of the Marshes will tolerate no dissent. Hand it over."

A real smile, the first he had seen from her, suddenly appeared as she returned the tool. "Very well, Your Majesty. If you insist."

The change in her face was mesmerizing. The taut wariness disappeared, softening her features and lightening the smudge of shadows beneath her eyes. They were, he noted, quite bewitching—long lashed and luminous, their hard-edged emerald hue having melted into a liquid green, quixotic as the sea. He couldn't help wondering what mysteries lay swirling beneath the surface.

Then her fingers grazed his, sending a strange wave of heat tingling through his arm. Good Lord, what had come over him? It was absolutely impossible that he should feel a spark of attraction for Miss Greeley. She was all steel, while he preferred silk. Her manners were like a blaze of bold color, while he preferred muted pastels, her tone a martial crescendo, while he preferred a dulcet legato.

It was fatigue and the lack of proper nourishment that was having such an odd effect on his senses, he assured himself. That was the only possible explanation for such momentary madness.

His hand jerked away, its grip so tight upon the pitted iron handle that he thought his knuckles might crack. "Let's get to work."

All the sharpness returned to her features. Without a word, she ducked her head and took hold of the barrow.

As he jabbed the blade into the turf, Prestwick felt the prick of his valet's grizzled gaze. Why the Devil was the old fellow cutting up at him with such a censorious expression? He refused to look up, and yet much to his annoyance, he felt the color rise to his cheeks, as if he were some naughty schoolboy.

Hell and damnation!
No matter which way he turned, it seemed he ended being a sad disappointment to everyone he encountered.

The wave that washed over him now was not one of sizzling passion but maudlin self-pity. There was not an adventurous bone in his body. He didn't want his hands dirtied or his boots scuffed. In fact, he was sorry he had ever strayed from the opulent comforts of his London townhouse, sorry he had ever caved in to the wheedling pleas of his mother's family, sorry he had agreed to use his ducal influence to help straighten out his rackety uncle's twisted affairs, sorry that he had ever met such a disconcerting clan as the Greeleys.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Oh yes, he was a sorry fellow indeed.

* * *

And here she had thought that their august sovereign George III was the only mad monarch in the realm.
Ha!
Zara gathered up a brick of peat and let it drop into the barrow with a satisfying squish. If all titled English gentlemen were as queer in the attic as the King of Spades, she was heartily glad she had never been introduced to the drawing rooms of London Society.

She considered herself a fairly shrewd judge of character. Her eye for detail, sharpened over the years by her study of art, had been honed to a fine point by the need to survive. It allowed her to penetrate the veneer of polished smiles and practiced compliments and detect the tiny flaws and hairline cracks that went unnoticed by most other people. But the dratted duke remained cloaked in mystery, despite her attempts to strip away the layers of contradictions surrounding him.

No amount of salt or seaweed could disguise the elegant cut of his clothing or the costliness of their materials. That alone would have given notice of his being a Gentleman of Quality. Yet even without the fine tailoring dressing his person, there was a natural aristocratic bearing about him that made it obvious he had been born to a life of power and privilege. So how to explain the unspoken bond of friendship between the duke and his disabled valet? Even an unsophisticated country miss knew that it was nothing short of extraordinary for a gentleman to allow a servant to behave as an equal.

A muttered growl from the duke caused her brow to furrow. His snippy whining and preening manners bespoke a pampered aristocrat. But along with the sulky sentiments, he had shown hints of having a dry sense of humor. And beneath the surface glare of disgruntled disapproval in his eyes, she had also caught glimpses of deeper, far more complex emotions than mere pique.

Unless she was terribly mistaken, The Duke of Prestwick was far more thoughtful and intelligent than he appeared. Why, she wondered, did he wish to keep such qualities hidden away?

Another slanted glance in his direction showed that he had begun to master the rhythm of shoveling. His boot drove in the blade with authority and a flick of his wrists drew it in a sharp line through the spongy peat, cutting out neat block at nearly the same pace as Nonny. Zara found she couldn't help watching his long, lithe fingers in action. There was nothing indolent or lazy about their graceful movement. Surely they were used for something more meaningful than knotting his cravat in a
Trone d'Amour
or Mathematical.