Susan Johnson (10 page)

“A
ride first, our race stables, or a picnic! You decide!” His voice was raised to be heard over the sound of the wind as the horses raced down the road.

“Riding!” she shouted back. It was too soon after breakfast to eat, and she was avoiding the Westerlands property. Although riding had been her first choice since Duff had mentioned he kept his string of campaign ponies at the hunting lodge. Any horse that could survive the risks and hazards of combat was sure to be a superior mount.

As they approached a large Jacobean brick structure surrounded by old yews, Annabelle tapped the satchel at her feet. “Why don’t I change in the stables?” She’d chosen to bring her breeches with her rather than wear them in the event they met someone on the road who would look askance at a female in pants. The locals were prone enough to gossip without deliberately soliciting their attention.

“Nonsense, change in the house. Eddie might be in the stables,” the marquis noted, pulling the horses to a stop. “He doesn’t seem to be around.” Although he suspected his batman was making himself scarce for the same matchmaking reasons as Mrs. Foster.

“Are you sure you didn’t plan for your valet to be absent?” Annabelle inquired, gathering up the small bag as Duff jumped to the ground and secured the horses’ reins.

But her tone was sportive, so he answered honestly. “God only knows what Eddie’s motives are. I’ve been an invalid so long, he’s probably more anxious than anyone that I return to what he perceives as my normal life.”

“And that includes women, no doubt.”

“To be perfectly honest,” Duff replied, lifting her down, “I don’t know what
normal
entails anymore.” He guided her toward the house. “It’s been a year.”

And he still favored his right leg, she noticed, his stride shifting slightly from time to time as though to ease some aggravation. “Your friends missed you, I understand,” she said politely, in lieu of voicing her thoughts.

“They stopped coming out after a time, but their letters continued to arrive. Or so Eddie says. I haven’t seen them.”

“Surely you intend to read them now that you’re feeling better.”

He’d heard that tone in a woman too many times not to take notice. “Pray, let’s not argue about my letters,” he said with utmost diplomacy. “You read them if you like.”

“I hardly think that would serve the purpose.”

“You need but tell me what you deem purposeful,” he murmured, a touch of amusement in his eyes, “and I shall immediately comply.”

“Now if only I were young and naive, my lord,” she said with a mocking glance, “such flummery
might
be believable.”

“And you and I are long past naivete, aren’t we?” he murmured.

“I’m not sure naivete is a virtue.”

“I wouldn’t mind a glimpse of it from time to time after all I’ve seen,” he said, frowning faintly.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you in that regard.” A mild sarcasm resonated in her words.

“You mistake me. I meant I’d like to see a less bloodthirsty world—one not completely bereft of human kindness.”

“How can we possibly alter the larger world of affairs, my lord? I’ve long since given up such pretensions.”

“So pragmatic, my lady,” he said with a smile.

“I find it very unwise not to be.”

“Ah.”

“Indeed. While you may indulge in your dreams of innocence, I cannot. Now, come, Duff,” she murmured. “It’s too nice a day to dwell on things that can never be. I would much prefer living in the moment on such a glorious day,” she added with a smile. “And consider, if we race, I might let you win this time.”

Her smile was magical—her rosy, upturned mouth lush and sweet, and she was right, of course. Neither one of them would change the world today. “Perhaps I only
let
you win last time,” he replied roguishly.

“Oh, ho, do I detect a challenge?” she said with a playful wink, pleased to have shifted the conversation to something more pleasant. She was the least likely person to have any influence over the social order. “Let me change and we’ll find out who’s the better rider.”

He grinned. “How can I refuse such sport?”

“How indeed? Do I have a choice of horses?”

Every one but Romulus, he wished to say, but remembering his manners, said instead, “Yes, of course. You choose.” Opening the entrance door a moment later, he ushered her into a vaulted hall cluttered with riding equipment. “Sorry about the mess,” he said, suddenly aware of disorder he’d never noticed before. “I’m afraid Eddie isn’t the best housekeeper.”

“You needn’t apologize. It looks very much like any bachelor establishment.”

He shouldn’t have taken issue with her familiarity with bachelor apartments, but he did. He wasn’t, however, stupid enough to vocalize his feelings; she wasn’t beholden to him in the least. He gestured at an L-shaped staircase, the ornate balustrade embellished with bas reliefs of hunting scenes. “Feel free to use any of the rooms upstairs. In the meantime, I’ll see if Eddie left us our picnic.”

“I’ll be down in a thrice,” Annabelle said, and moved toward the stairway. Just before reaching the landing, feeling as though Duff’s gaze might be on her, she glanced back.

She’d been right.

He smiled.

She smiled back, but her heart suddenly began beating like a drum, and a spiking rush of desire spiraled downward, warming every sensitive nerve and cell in her body until it came to rest with a lustful jolt in her newly aroused, gently throbbing vagina.

His slow, lazy smile was much practiced, she didn’t doubt. Not that such a judgement in any way reduced its efficacy or its danger.

Shaken by her intense response, she didn’t dare look back again. And only when she reached safe haven in the second floor corridor did she allow herself to stop and take stock of her skittish, fevered feelings. Heavens, she was trembling. This would never do, she decided, drawing in a deep, hopefully calming breath in an attempt to mitigate her agitation. This was most unusual. She had never been prone to such
unwanted
emotion before. Nor had she been the kind of woman to lose control.

What was perhaps even more galling was the fact that a man like Duff was overly familiar with female acquiescence—and adulation.

She refused to join that sisterhood.

She absolutely
would not
.

How many years had she spent nurturing her independence—Walingame’s recent blackmail aside. Even then she’d managed to keep him in check until she’d been able to pay him off and regain her freedom.

And free she would remain—in every sense of the word.

Having satisfactorily, or at least intellectually, resolved the issues of her physical response to Duff, she pressed on down the corridor. The lengthy hall was intersected with numerous smaller hallways and lined as well with a rabbit warren of rooms in the style of the time.

Having marginally regained her composure, she allowed herself to yield to perhaps a female’s curiosity about Duff’s lair or refuge or whatever one wished to call the place he’d chosen to reside in while licking his wounds. She briefly surveyed the interior of each room as she passed. That she might be interested in gaining some insight into the marquis she chose not to acknowledge. That the marquis even interested her in any but the most superficial way, she resisted admitting. She settled instead on the fiction that she might make use of one of the rooms as a future stage set.

Ah, denial.

It turned out that Duff’s bedroom was located at the far end of the corridor. He must like the morning sun, she thought, standing in the doorway, surveying the bank of east-facing windows. Since this wasn’t the largest room—several others had been larger—he’d chosen this room for a reason. Was it the large bed or had that been brought in? The other rooms were furnished in Jacobean relics—the population much shorter centuries ago. He must have wanted a bed he could stretch out in.

She half-smiled.

Duff certainly had been right about the mess. The bed was unmade, the quilted coverlet dragging on the floor, the sheets rumpled. Clothes were draped over chairs and tossed on tables, two pairs of his riding boots had been left in a heap by the door. A number of crumpled neck cloths had been discarded on the dressing table, testament to fashionable custom. A perfectly tied cravat was
de rigueur.

Moving into the room, she dropped her bag on the bed and wandered around the room, intrigued by the opportunity to glimpse the man behind the legend.

Books were scattered everywhere. His taste ran to treatises on horses, naturally; the family’s breeding program was the best in England. Although a smattering of fiction lay amongst the discarded books, a copy of Kleist’s
Michael Kohlhaas
open on his bedside table, a book not designed to raise the spirits. But she liked Duff’s taste. Kleist was also one of her favorite playwrights.

The sage-green coat he’d worn the day they’d gone to the monastery ruins had been tossed on a chair near the bed, as though he’d taken it off and fallen into bed. Picking it up, she put it to her nose, inhaling his fragrance. The coat smelled of musk with undertones of leather. Thoroughly male, like him, she thought, moving to a nearby desk. Placing the coat in her lap, she sat down on his desk chair to study a small portrait propped against the cubbyholes at the back. The painting was of Duff and his siblings as youngsters. As the eldest, Duff stood with one hand resting on the back of a settee where his sisters and brother all sat like little birds in a row.

My lord, how old was he there? Ten, perhaps? So tall and straight and serious. One sister couldn’t have been more than two or three, a golden-haired little girl with a winning smile. The rest were all dark like Duff, although he was the only one who looked grave.

Somehow she’d never thought of him as somber, his entire adult life in London given over to amusements. (Although certainly the year since Waterloo had been devoid of pleasure.) But he’d been notorious before leaving for the Peninsula, his reputation scandalous, his high play at the clubs still setting records for profligacy and excess.

The man himself had always remained illusive, however, his persona as consummate lover and libertine the only one offered for public consumption.

She remembered that night long ago in the green room at Drury Lane. When she’d refused him, he’d smiled, offered her an exquisite bow, and moved on to one of the other young actresses in the room.

How much had happened to them both since then.

Some good and much that was not.

But they were both mending now, and there was no point in holding oneself hostage to the past. Not on such a thoroughly beautiful day. She intended to enjoy it. And on that more positive note, she rose, dropped his coat on the desk chair, and moved to the bed to open her valise.

She adored riding and Duff’s mounts were sure to be first-rate.

Unbuttoning her black lawn jacket with hussar-style braid and pompom trim, she slipped it off and set it aside before pulling her gray gown over her head. Her petticoat and shift came off next. Stepping into her nankeen breeches a moment later, she buttoned them at the waist and knee, put on her short jacket once again, buttoned it up, and glanced about the room, looking for a mirror.

None. Surely this was a man indifferent to the world.

Her ensemble was adequate enough, though, she knew, her black half-boots and white stockings typical dress for a youth. Which was in fact her role when she’d last worn these breeches on the stage many years ago. Fortuitously, they’d been left at her mother’s, for with her recent trip home made in haste, her packing had been the most superficial.

“SHOULD I COME UP OR ARE YOU COMING DOWN?”

Duff’s voice echoed up the staircase. Annabelle hesitated for an irrational fraction of a second before taking two steps toward the open door and calling out, “I’LL COME DOWN!” She refused to even consider her moment of hesitation; it was an aberration. That she would want Duff to come up to his bedroom was inconceivable.

As though to suppress any possible future folly, she bundled up her clothes, stuffed them into her valise and carried them with her. If Eddie wasn’t around on their return, she could change back into her dress in the stables. She wasn’t about to leave herself open to temptation.

As she reached the top of the stairs a few moments later, she heard Duff’s quick indrawn breath. But when she looked down, she thought she may have imagined the sound, for he was gazing up at her with a bland smile.

At the sight of Annabelle’s shapely form in tight breeches, the marquis had given in to a rare gaucherie—quickly suppressed—and his voice was composed now as he spoke. “The last time I saw you like that was in the role of Jacintha. I still remember the roar of the crowd when you first walked on stage.”

“Women in men’s breeches invariably draw that kind of reaction,” Annabelle noted, starting down the stairs. “Although, my costume today is for purely functional purposes. I’m looking forward to our ride.”

“As am I,” he replied affably. But his eyes were less affable and more covetous.

“Did you find a picnic basket?” She was trying with some difficulty to speak casually. He’d changed his coat and now wore a chamois jacket that fit like a second skin, the fashions of the time purposefully accentuating the male physique—not a flattering style for the portly Prince Regent who had to resort to corsets. But corsets weren’t a necessity for the marquis’s tautly honed body. Both his short jacket and his buff leather riding pants could have been painted on. He was decidedly lean, yet curiously powerful as well, his hard, muscled arms and shoulders, his lean hips and strong thighs an irresistible sight. As was his rising erection limned against the soft, buff leather of his riding pants.

She shouldn’t have been looking, of course.

Or perhaps she should blame him for not better curbing his appetites.

A barely perceptible frisson raced up her spine.

Or it would have been imperceptible had the atmosphere been less fraught with desire.