A Gentleman and a Scoundrel (The Regency Gentlemen Series) (12 page)

The Duke brought his horse over to her and the animal nuzzled her arm.

“Oh, is she yours?” Louisa asked raising a hand to stroke the horse’s nose.

“No, I stole her.”

She threw him a laughing look.

“Yes, she is mine. Turn towards me and I will lift you up,” the Duke responded coming up beside her.

Louisa’s heart began to pound. Was he suggesting that she share the horse with him? Was he suggesting that she sit on his lap within the circle of his arms, her head against his shoulder? She tried not to imagine riding thus. She tried to tell herself that it was highly improper and that she did not want such intimacy with him, but to no avail. Her mind was running riot. 

“But I don’t have a lady’s side-saddle,” she said softly.

“Do you need one?”

She stared at him. “Are you suggesting that I ride that saddle?” she demanded, blushing at the thought of spreading her legs wide over the horse’s back, her gown riding up around her hips.

“I might be,” he replied with a slow smile. “You must have ridden thus when you were a child.”

“Oh, yes, but…” She could not go on.

“I will set you down long before the house. No-one need know.”

Louisa felt her stomach plummet with disappointment. He was treating her as if she were a child! She bit her tongue to stop the angry retort that sprang to her lips. He thought he was giving her a high treat as he might have done to a small child. A ride on his horse. Was he to ask her if she wanted to play jackstraws next?

“But it is highly improper, your grace.”

“So is marching about the countryside without a stitch on. Come. I am not such a dull creature all the time, you know.”

She lowered her eyes. “I didn’t think you were, sir.”

He looked amused but let it pass and held out a hand to her. She did not take it.

“I am not used to riding that saddle sir,” she said. “I might fall.”

“Nonsense. Come, I will lift you.”

“Is there not another way for me to ride home?” she asked, blushing at her own brazenness.

He dropped the hand that had been extended in invitation, misreading her reluctance to take it for a rejection of him. He looped the reins of his horse around the branch of the tree and smiled into her uncertain eyes. “Don’t you trust me?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Do you think I am such a poor judge of horseflesh that my mare will land you in the ditch?” he teased.

“I am sure that she won’t.”

“Perhaps you think a man of my advanced years should not be purchasing such a creature and risk over exciting himself in such a fashion. What did you recommend for me? A landau?”

She bit her lip to stop herself from laughing. “Did that offend you, Duke?”

“Offend me? No. It mortally wounded my pride. I am thirty two; not
one hundred
and thirty two.”

She laughed. “I apologise then. But Nicholas says you are too old for me,” she said.

“I know he does. He no doubt put the idea in your head that I am too old to ride a horse. And do you…do you think I am too old for other things too?” he asked softly.

“What things?” she countered, blushing.

He took a step forward and then another until he was less than six inches away from her. Her eyes met his. They held each other’s gaze in a long breathless moment that set her pulse racing.

“Chess?” he suggested after a long moment of exquisitely tense silence.

She laughed nervously, knowing full well that the noble game of chess was not the activity currently occupying both their minds. “
Chess
?”

“Very strenuous, you know,” he murmured. “Could sprain a thumb if one is not careful.”

“No,” she replied breathlessly, “I don’t think you too old for…chess.”

He reached out a hand and smoothed a wisp of hair away from her eyes. “Quite right,” he agreed.

She shivered but it was not from the cold.

He placed his hands upon her waist and in one smooth move lifted her high onto the back of his horse, his eyes never leaving hers. Her stomach
flipped over as his hands held her aloft. She felt powerless and ridiculously alive as if every nerve in her body jumped at his touch.

“I am not going to ride home with
that
man,” said Lady Emma with a glare over her shoulder at Mr Ashworth who followed, looking mildly amused as he led his horse up to them. “I am not so lost to all propriety as to sit on the same horse as him, whatever he may think to the contrary.”

The spell was completely and utterly broken. Whatever magic had been in the air shattered like glass, and Louisa turned to hide her acute disappointment as Malvern walked away.

Mrs Henry Trent, whose marital home was only a few miles from Foxhill, wrote to her mama with the news that Louisa was in the neighbourhood staying with their uncle and that the Duke of Malvern was often in attendance. They were getting on famously, declared Sophie, and she would not be at all surprised if her sister and the Duke did not make a match of it after all.

The arrival of her letter precipitated a need of Louisa’s father to oversee proceedings and it wasn’t long before the Earl and his Countess arrived uninvited to Foxhill to manage the situation to their own satisfaction.

However, within one hour of arriving at Mr King’s quiet country home, the peace of the beautiful Tudor manor house was seriously compromised.

“I will not!” cried Louisa, standing and flinging down her embroidery. “I will not marry him and you cannot make me!”

The Countess of Crowborough observed her daughter’s departure in long suffering silence. The door when it slammed caused a painting to shift on the wall, the gentleman and his wig now at an alarming angle.

Uncle Ned exchanged glances with his daughter. “More tea?” he asked in his soft voice.

Determined to catch Malvern in his noose before the Duke left for town again, the Earl had gone about the task in entirely the wrong manner. It was his view that Louisa was spoiled and all she needed was a firm hand.

“You
are
a fool, John,” Lady Crowborough said softly to her husband.

The Earl spread his hands. “What have I done?”

“All you will do is drive her into young Ashworth’s arms. Is that what you want?”

“Of course it isn’t. But you have seen her and Malvern together. They are getting along famously.”

“Yes,” replied her ladyship, pouring out another cup of tea. “And if you would just let things progress naturally, I think she would be very likely to have him. But she is like you and stubborn―now don’t fly up onto your high ropes, my love, you know that you are. When did you ever do anything that someone else ordered you to do?”

“This morning,” he replied promptly. “You told me specifically not to get marmalade on Ned’s newspaper because he particularly doesn’t like it. You ventured to drop me a hint and I was happy to obey.”

Mr King reddened and assured them that he did not mind such trifling matters as marmalade on his newspaper.

The Countess ignored this speech and sighed. “A hint, yes. Bludgeoning you with it would have met with a mulish determination to carry on as you were before.”

“So what would you have me do then? Let her throw herself away on that young buck who hasn’t two pennies to rub together?”

“Of course not. But I think that her affection for him, such as it is, will wear itself out before long. All we need do is wait.”

“She
will
marry Malvern!” he said, slamming his hand down upon the table. “It is the fondest wish of both her family and his.”

Lady Crowborough sighed, exchanged a meaningful glance with Eliza and gave up. She returned to her magazine, examining a fashion plate with some dismay. “Long sleeves are in fashion again.”

“How tedious,” agreed Miss Eliza King, nibbling a cake.

“Damn impudence!” rumbled his lordship. “That chit of a girl thinks she can run rings around me―”

“Primrose yellow too…do you think I would look well in yellow, my love? I did once have a gown that colour when I was expecting Sophie. I thought it became me rather well…”

“I’m fed up with being told what to do by the women in my house. Surrounded by ‘em! Four females are enough to drive any man to Bedlam.”

“Papa,” said Emma, coming into the room at that moment. “Whatever is the matter? I could hear you arguing the other side of the house!”

“Your sister!” responded the Earl wrathfully. “She’s still set against Malvern.”

Emma pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “She’s just snubbed him. The poor man asked her to go out for a drive with him and she bit his nose off and told him that she never wanted to see him again.”

“Now see what you have done,” said Lady Crowborough, glaring at her husband.

“Don’t blame me. If your daughter is spoiled there is only one person to blame for it,” he responded, hacking through a lump of cake with his knife.

“Me, I suppose?” demanded the Countess, her bosom heaving. “And if Louisa ends up eloping with Nicholas Ashworth, I will know very well who is to blame!”

She flung down her magazine and stalked from the room.

The Earl watched her go, slightly chastened by the temper of his wife. “Devil take it, I’m in trouble again, Emmy.”

“Go and make up with her.”

“Which one?”

Emma laughed softly. “Mama, of course. I will speak to Louisa.”

He sighed and stood up, squaring his shoulders. “I only want what’s best for her. Do you really think she would marry young Ashworth just to flout me?”

“I hope not Papa. I don’t think she’s really in love with him.”

He digested this with foreboding. “God only knows what lurks inside the female mind. I saw Robert Marcham in London a couple of weeks ago. Handsome fellow, just came into another property, won it in a game of cards, so they say. Do you think Louisa would like him better than Malvern? I know an Earl is not as high as a Duke, and he is a hardened gamester, but he’s a capital fellow.”

“And makes Mr Nicholas Ashworth look like a choirboy,” said Emma uncharitably. “No, I do not think Louisa would prefer the Earl of Marcham. Papa, please do not mention it to Louisa. Or Mama for that matter. Unless of course you
wish
to spend the night sleeping in the stables.”

* * *

“Didn’t you hear me?” cried Louisa, snatching her elbow out of the Duke’s hand. “I said I never want to see you again!”

She flung away from him and opened the glass panelled door into the orangery. The scent of citrus assaulted her nostrils at once and the heat was stifling; very much like the rage within her.

“What have I done?” Malvern demanded following her, a frown between his brows.

The greenhouse was hot and humid even with one of the windows open, and the sun beat down upon them and the sky burned bright blue through the glass roof. Beds were arranged down each side filled with orange and lemon trees and a huge grape vine covered one wall. A white painted seat was set in the middle, but it was too hot to sit there today.

“What have you done?” she repeated, laughing wildly. “You have come here,
that’s
what you have done!”

He stiffened, the lines of his handsome mouth compressed, and seemed momentarily incapable of a reply.

“Papa thinks you have come here specifically to make me an offer.”

“Your papa thinks it or you think it?” he asked.

“All you have done by following me here is reawaken expectations in my father’s breast,” she replied. “If you had not come, he might have eventually given up the idea and I would not now be harangued from all sides.”

“How very distressing for you.”

“You announced to Nicholas that we were engaged,” she replied, ignoring this. “And because of you and your assumption that I would be so overcome by your wealth and position that I would jump at the chance to wed you, he felt he had to offer for me and now I am engaged to him…and…and I don’t
wish
to be! I don’t wish to be engaged to
anyone
,” she said, slicing at the fronds of a palm tree with the edge of her hand. “Papa says that I have to marry you. And I
won’t
. He cannot make me.”

The Duke stood stock still.

“Oh why did you come here?” she complained; sweat glistening across her brow, her chin, and the hollows of her collar bone. “You’ve ruined everything."

“I came because Marcus invited me,” he replied stiffly.

“And I just happened to be here?”

He looked surprised. “
Yes
, you happened to be here. You flatter yourself if you think I came here merely to see you.”

She stiffened. “Didn’t you?”

He shook his head in laughing disbelief. “Dear God, the attention you have excited at a few parties has gone to your head,” he said scathingly. “Just because you have all the fortune hunters and fops of London at your feet, don’t think to put me there also. You are not the only pretty girl of my acquaintance.”

She turned away to hide her face. “No indeed, you have hoards of pretty girls swooning at your feet, don’t you?” she retorted. “And you cannot stand it that I am not one of them.”

“This is laughable. What is the matter with you? What has happened to make you rip up at me like this?”

“You come here, following me from pillar to post around the country like some…some lap-dog, hoping that I will take pity on you and accept you,” she continued, swiping angrily at an overhanging orange blossom.

“
Lap
-dog?” he repeated furiously.

“Or are you hoping that I will finally give in to my father’s demands and that he will bludgeon me into accepting you? Well I can tell you now, I will not!”

The muscles in his jaw clenched tight with anger. “I do not need your father to fight my battles for me.”

“Then why else are you here? Nicholas says you are always sniffing round me.”

“I might have known he would have something to say on the matter,” the Duke snapped. “Do you have a thought in your head that was not put there by him?”

“How dare you? At least he doesn’t treat me as if it is his
right
to have me!” she flashed, her eyes sparkling with anger.

“Indeed? Have I not been brought up to expect that it is my right, that your family and mine would be allied by our marriage?” he asked, his voice icy with disdain.

“Yes, but that was my sister and she married Mr Trent. I am
not
my sister and not bound by those promises. You have no right to me.”

He stripped her bare with his eyes. “You speak as if you are something quite out of the common way, as if you are a great prize and I should count myself fortunate to be allowed to pay you my addresses! I am
only
a Duke after all! You value your own worth too highly, madam.”

She blushed, shamefaced. “And you value
your
worth too high. You speak of a marriage as if you can just pick a woman off a shelf. Two a penny are they, to a great man like you? You care not whom they are, as long as they are fit for breeding.”

He laughed scornfully. “You talk very freely of breeding, ma’am. I would have thought a twenty-year-old chit from the schoolroom would have shown a little more modesty.”

She flung up her hands. “Oh yes, modesty. Why not preach to me of duty as well? And respectability and virtue. You sound like my father. I might have known that you would preach something as dull as that. We cannot have a young lady who shows any emotion, can we? We cannot talk of love or feelings or passion. You are so stiff and starched I wonder if you have ever let yourself go. I’ll wager you even make love with your coat buttoned up.”

“What do you know about making love?” he asked, his eyes raking her up and down. “A schoolroom miss who’s barely been kissed? Don’t make me laugh.”

“I know more than you!”

“Indeed?” he replied frigidly. “I am sure your father would be very interested to hear it. I think the Earl of Crowborough would be mortified to learn that his daughter has already parted company with her virtue.”

She stared at him in confusion. “You mistake me. I was talking about feelings of the heart and love―things that you apparently think unimportant.”