Amanda Scott (14 page)

“Emily, don’t run away. You are not such a coward as that.”

She looked back over her shoulder, surprised by his calm. He stood upon the library threshold, looking more tousled than usual, watching her. The amusement in his eyes was unmistakable now. “If you expect an apology,” she said stiffly, “you will have to wait for it. I daresay I behaved badly—in fact, I know perfectly well that I did—but I am still too angry with you to apologize.”

“I know that, so go put on your riding habit instead. I’ve got business at the park this morning, but if you ride over with me, we can talk on the way and my housekeeper will give us a meal before we ride back. We’ll take a groom with us too, so the proprieties will be observed and so you needn’t fear I’ll murder you. It is past time to declare a truce. We need to talk.”

She regarded him warily. “You aren’t angry?”

“Not at the moment, so you would be wise to take advantage of the fact. After the turn you served me yesterday and that nursery stunt you pulled just now, only consider what I might feel justified in doing to you. I think you will agree that a ride to Meriden Park is preferable.”

Attempting to ignore the tremor that shot up and down her spine at the images his words had created in her mind, Emily nodded and hurried to obey him. Their horses were waiting at the front entrance when she rejoined him in the hall, dressed in an elegant habit, the color of which matched her eyes.

“I like that hat,” he told her with a grin. “Have you any notion how seductively that blue feather curls on your cheek?” He reached out a finger to touch the feather, but Emily, blushing, stepped away from him and straightened her hat. He shook his head and indicated with a bow of exaggerated gallantry that she should precede him.

Convinced that the earl could not be as composed as he pretended to be, Emily wondered if she was making a mistake by accompanying him to his house. Perhaps, she thought, he merely wished to get her away from the safety of Staithes Priory in order to wreak his vengeance upon her in a place where no one would dare to interfere. At the top of the steps, she looked back to find him smiling at her. Her fears vanished, and without really stopping to consider why she did so, she smiled back.

As he cupped his hand beneath her elbow, a rider on a sleek chestnut hack hove into view and cantered up the drive. By the time Meriden and Emily had reached the bottom step, Mr. Enderby had jumped lightly down from his saddle and tossed his reins to the grinning stableboy who held Meriden’s gelding.

Harry doffed his beaver hat and said cheerfully, “Dashed fine day. M’ mother sends her regards, Miss Wingrave.” He glanced at the house. “Trust Ollie and his great gun ain’t shoved off already.”

“No, indeed,” Emily told him after a brief struggle with herself. “In point of fact, you will find the pair of them lingering in the breakfast parlor. They played piquet rather late last night, I believe.”

“Sluggards,” Mr. Enderby said. “Been up for hours m’self. Uh, suppose I ought first to pay my respects to her ladyship. She about?”

Emily smiled, nearly as certain as she could be after her short time at Staithes that he had not come to see Sabrina. “She and Dolly are in the drawing room, sir.”

Meriden cut in impatiently, “Just run along up and tell Merritt your business. He will point you in whatever direction you choose to go.”

“Dashed good notion,” said Mr. Enderby, replacing his hat and running up the steps without futher ado.

Meriden watched him. “Fop,” he said disparagingly.

“You wrong him, sir,” Emily said. “He is a dandy, perhaps, but not a fop. Only consider the difference between Mr. Saint Just’s appearance and Mr. Enderby’s.”

“Look here,” said Meriden, appalled, “do you like that sort of thing? Everything starched and twisted about, and a man’s shirt points so high and his coats so tight he can’t breathe?”

Smiling, she cast a quick glance over him. He had clearly been able, without the least difficulty or assistance from his valet, to shrug his dark gray coat on over his pale-biscuit-colored buckskins. The breeches fitted his muscled form to a nicety, however, she noted approvingly. His neckcloth was snowy white, but it lacked the stiffness demanded by the sartorial smarts, and it was simply tied. His shirt points were moderate, and his topboots, though well-polished, were certainly not so shiny as to make other gentlemen demand to know his recipe for blacking. “I believe,” she said gently, “that men who expend so much thought on their attire can have little time left to think about anything else.”

Apparently satisfied with her response, he tossed her up onto her saddle, ordered the boy to take Mr. Enderby’s hack around to the stables, and told Emily’s groom to follow without crowding them. When he swung into his own saddle, the gelding sidled and danced, but Meriden let him do so for only a moment before firmly drawing him in next to Emily’s mare.

They rode in silence through the shady wood until they had reached the first fork in the road, when Emily, glancing sideways at him, said, “You did say you wished to converse with me, did you not? Where does that road lead?”

“Up onto the moor and beyond to the village,” he said. “The next turning leads to the vicarage, as you know, and the next after that goes to Meriden.” He looked serious again. “I was trying to think how to begin what I wish to say to you.”

“How to begin tactfully, do you mean? That will take too long.” Seeing by his quick, flashing grin that the shaft had gone home, she said, “I suppose I ought to apologize for throwing your clothes into the pond.”

He winced. “If you had the least notion of how much I paid for that jacket or those boots—”

“Well, I do have a pretty good notion,” she said ruefully, “for despite what you seem to think, sir, my brothers—graybeards that they are—do talk, and complaining about how much Weston demands for a coat or Hoby for a pair of good boots is a favorite pastime of theirs. You frightened me, you see, and I didn’t know what else to do. It was an infamous thing to have done, however, and I know you were vexed—”

“A little,” he admitted, smiling at her again. “You need not dance around the point, you know. Oliver told me the whole tale this morning.”

“He did?”

Meriden nodded. “He’s got more bottom than I thought. I couldn’t tell you with Enderby standing there, but the real reason he was late to breakfast was that before Harbottle took young Giles to the vicarage, I sent him to roust Oliver out of bed. I’m afraid I was rather unpleasant to the lad.”

“No, were you?” she retorted sweetly. “What a busy morning you have had, to be sure.”

“Mind your tongue,” he said. “Oliver heard me out without a whimper and then told me he had already spoken to his friend and to Dolly. Then, without so much as drawing breath, he informed me that I had misunderstood certain things about yesterday’s incident at the pond.”

“Goodness,” said Emily, impressed, “but he never said a word about this to me. The breakfast-parlor door was open when I passed it on my way to change into my habit, and I called a greeting to him, but he didn’t even mention having seen you.”

“I asked him not to do so.”

“But why?”

He grinned. “I wanted to punish you, of course, for ruining another expensive coat and a second pair of boots. I hoped you would employ the extra time in sober consideration of what I might be planning to do to you in retaliation.”

“But I’ve explained to you why I did that,” she said, glaring at him when she remembered her fears. “Indeed, you must have known why at the time, and since you now know that I was not the one who took your clothes, surely now you will apologize for frightening me so.”

“I will,” said the earl, turning to gaze directly at her, “if you can tell me honestly that had you chanced to arrive at the pond before Oliver did, you would not have taken my clothes.”

Emily bit her lower lip, refusing for some moments even to look at him. When she did so at last, her eyes brimmed with laughter. “You are quite the most abominable man I have ever encountered. Surely you must know that I had considered and rejected any number of plans to repay you for kissing me in the great hall that day. I doubt I would have overlooked an opportunity that simply presented itself, and Melanie and I were walking to the pond when we met Oliver and Mr. Saint Just and they told us about their prank.”

“Why didn’t you leave matters as you found them?” he asked.

“Why, because once I discovered what they had done, I thought only of extricating Oliver from the tangle he had got himself into. I knew he would be able to explain the York assembly nonsense to your satisfaction, but I was afraid that if you guessed he was responsible for taking your clothes, you wouldn’t listen to anything else he said to you.”

Jack shrugged ruefully. “I am sometimes a trifle impatient, I suppose.”

Emily choked on the rising gurgle of laughter in her throat.

He grinned again. “Look here, why have I never seen this side of you before? I thought I understood the reason for your unmarried state, but now I am not so sure. Some man ought to have seen beneath that cool exterior to the laughter and passion before now. Don’t tell me none has ever done so.”

“There have been several,” she replied, growing serious at once. “Even one gentleman whom I rather favored.” She paused, adding with some difficulty, “That was during my first Season, when I was not so cool or confident as perhaps I appear to be now. But Mr. Campion married a girl with a larger portion. ’Tis the way of the beau monde, is it not?” She glanced at him to see that his lips had hardened into a straight line. Then, because she was afraid he would ask more pressing questions about that dreadful time, she asked quickly, “What did you mean before, about thinking you knew why I am unmarried?”

For a moment she thought he would not answer. Then he said gently, “In London and at Woburn you were always so controlled, so sure of yourself, so damned cool. Even when I kissed you at Christmas—and I know I made you angry—you just froze up, looked at me as though I were muck beneath your feet, and then became more chillingly polite than ever. That sort of behavior puts a man off, lass. But, knowing you as I do now, I cannot believe you didn’t want to see my head summarily removed from my shoulders, at the very least, for what I did to you that night.”

Emily’s color heightened at the memory, but staring straight ahead, she said calmly, “I prided myself then on my ability to control my temper. I never could do so as a child, you see, and unkind people had told me that my temper was as much a cause as my lack of a large portion for Ste … for Mr. Campion’s having chosen another lady to wed. I am ashamed to say that my temper was very nearly a joke in my family, except that no one ever laughed when I got angry. Instead, they did whatever they could to placate me. I daresay I grew to be a trifle spoilt as a result.” She looked at him. “Did you say something?”

Meriden shook his head, his lips pressed more tightly together than ever.

“Then perhaps you coughed.” When he made no reply, she said, “Well, in any event, I also grew to be a trifle stubborn in my ways, so—”

Unable to control himself any longer, Jack shouted with laughter, “Enough, you wretched woman! Don’t do this to me. A trifle spoilt? A trifle stubborn? Why, you must have been the most outrageously spoilt and mule-headed little demon in Wiltshire, and how you ever learned to hide it behind that prime-and-proper mask of yours is more than I shall ever know. Good Lord, you must have wanted to murder me at Woburn.”

“Very nearly,” she admitted, “but then afterward—immediately afterward, that is—I was so proud of myself, proud that I had not so much as boxed your ears, you see, that instead I had behaved as a proper lady of quality ought to behave.”

“How long before the reaction set in?” he asked dryly as they turned onto an uphill track.

She made a face at him. “By that night I was regretting my lost opportunity. You were so smug, so cock-o’-the-walk pleased at having won your wager. The worst of it is that I have thought so often of the incident since then, always wishing I had succumbed to the urge to slap that smugness off your face. Usually, once I’ve lost my temper, I forget about the incident, but I’ve relived that night a hundred times over in my mind, always behaving more as I wish I had behaved toward you. When I arrived here and Sabrina told me that you were the Cousin Jack she had mentioned in her letters, when she even hinted that the gossips had dared to link my name with yours after Christmas—well, I suppose I reached the limit of what my temper would stand. So when you goaded me at the table that first night, I simply reacted.” She sent him another sidelong glance. “I certainly never expected you to respond as you did.”

He grimaced. “This nonsense has got to stop, Emily. I realized that much while I was trying to extricate myself from those damned curtains. I was in a blazing rage at first—our tempers are too much alike, I think, too quick to flare. You are fortunate I could not catch you at once. What saved your skin was that I realized how ridiculous I would look if one of the servants chanced to walk in just then. Instead of making me angrier, it made me want to laugh. I saw then how absurd our behavior has been. We descended to nursery tactics that very first night and we haven’t ever progressed beyond them.”

To her shock, she thought about when he had kissed her, and color darkened her cheeks as she said carefully, “What do you think we can do about it? I cannot help getting angry; it just happens. And even though I’m nearly always sorry afterward, that doesn’t help what’s gone before. I thought I had learned to control it, but I don’t seem able to do so around you.”

“You needn’t tell me that,” he said with a chuckle. “I react the same way to you, as you know to your cost. In point of fact, it might help you to restrain your impulsive nature if you can contrive to remember that I still owe you a trifle on account for my ruined clothes, for making me walk this distance yesterday in sodden boots and buckskins, for the curtain trick, and for my injured pride.”

“Why did you walk home in wet buckskins yesterday?” she asked. “That other time you borrowed something to wear from one of the men in the stables, did you not?”