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He glared at his damaged foot. How many days would this cost him?
And how was he to get through them without losing his mind?
The following morning
“He can’t ride to London!” Olympia said. “He should not have come this far. He was not to put any weight on his foot. Everybody knew that!”
She had gone down to breakfast rather earlier than she was accustomed to, on account of being woken by a bad dream. In it, Ashmont had been pounding at the door, and Ripley and Cato had leapt through a window to knock him down. But while Ashmont and Ripley were fighting, Bullard had caught hold of the dog, and started whipping him.
Her conscience plaguing her about abandoning Cato in a strange place, she’d been unable to go back to sleep. Instead she’d made a quick breakfast before hurrying to the stables, where a groom informed her that His Grace had ridden out “a short while ago.” He was headed to London.
“I’m sorry, your ladyship, but we didn’t know His Grace wasn’t to go,” the groom said. “Even if we did, we’d have a job trying to stop His Grace doing what he wanted to do.”
“That reckless man! I don’t doubt he pulled off the bandages, as well. Not that they’d do much good if he meant to tramp about stables and ride to London. He would have been sorry, I promise, before an hour had passed. And by then it would be too late.”
She stroked Cato’s head and he licked her gloved hand. “Why didn’t you stop him?” she said. “It’s a pity I hadn’t time to train you to take the tail of his coat between your teeth. But no, he’s a grown man, and if he wishes to behave in a self-destructive manner, wiser persons or canines can’t stop him. We’ll go for a walk, Cato, and see what your manners are like. And we shan’t trouble our minds with the Duke of Ripley’s determination to cripple himself.”
This was the rational thing to do.
Let him go.
Deal instead with the dog who, bad manners or not, would be infinitely more manageable and far easier to train than a spoiled, reckless nobleman.
“Woof!” said Cato.
She looked down at the dog who returned her regard, eyes bright, tail up and wagging.
“Ah, but you are reputed to be a hunter, are you not?” she said. “Shall we see?”
To the groom she said, “I shall want a carriage.”
She explained what she wanted it for.
Then she took off, at a run, for the house.
Chapter 10
This was not a mistake, Ripley told himself.
Another day in Lady Olympia Hightower’s vicinity and he’d turn into a gibbering imbecile.
The way she’d looked at him when he said she was pretty and shapely . . . the way she’d colored and the light in her eyes. She’d gazed at him the way another woman would if he showered her with diamonds.
He’d told himself it was normal, enjoying her blushes. But it wasn’t normal for the recollection to follow him to bed and haunt him. It wasn’t normal to feel guilty and unhappy and angry with the world on account of a woman.
Celibacy couldn’t be that poisonous. Something more was going on, which he was not going to think about. He wasn’t going to think at all.
He was going to put her behind him and do what needed to be done. He was going to do the right thing, because he was the bloody knight in shining armor. For every-goddamn-body.
Including Ashmont, who couldn’t be sober for his own wedding, or pursue his own runaway bride, and was taking his own bloody time about finding them, though Ripley had done nothing to conceal himself, and half the world must have recognized him as he passed. Could one have left a clearer trail? Ought Ripley to have posted signs?
Meanwhile his ankle, which had seemed well enough this morning when he set out, had decided to make this morning more hellish than it already was.
Only two more miles or so to Cobham and the George Inn. He’d rest there.
No, he wouldn’t. After traveling what? Six, seven miles? He ought to have covered twice the distance by now, ankle or no ankle.
But he was so bloody tired. Sick and tired.
He hadn’t slept, thanks to her. The naughty dreams wouldn’t have been a problem. He had them all the time. But those weren’t the only kind. She’d appeared in her bridal rig, all virginal white, her face glowing, and he’d lifted her into his arms and carried her away from a furious Ashmont. In another, she’d appeared in the wedding that hadn’t happened, standing next to Ashmont but looking at Ripley through her veil, her eyes dark. He’d watched tears stream down her face, under the veil, until it was soaking wet, and her dress was wet, too. Then it was raining and they were on the boat and she fell into the river and it carried her away, out of reach, while he roared her name.
He’d awakened in a cold sweat.
After that he hadn’t wanted to try to go back to sleep.
He’d waited until the first hints of daybreak, and pulled on some of his uncle’s clothes. Why in blazes did Aunt Julia keep them? How was she to get better if she clung to . . . what she couldn’t have anymore.
Stop it, he told himself.
He’d got away undetected. That was what mattered.
Not long after leaving Camberley Place, he’d stopped at the Talbot in Ripley, his namesake town. There he’d nursed a tankard to make up for the breakfast he’d missed. He shouldn’t have stopped so soon or for so long. He’d wanted another tankard and another and he wanted to blame it on his peevish foot, but the fact was, he couldn’t seem to pull himself together.
He’d wanted to turn back. Still wanted to.
Which he couldn’t do. There was nothing for him there.
So here he was, plodding along at the kind of pace he supposed her Lord Mends preferred.
Why? Because her ladyship had taken so much pains with Ripley’s curst ankle. Desperate as he was to get to London, he couldn’t bring himself to undo her work. Not to mention, he couldn’t appear crippled and weak when he met up with Ashmont.
So more torture: Every time the plaguey ankle gave one of its obnoxious twinges, Ripley remembered Olympia’s hands on him, on his foot, and the businesslike way she’d looked after him, completely oblivious to his desperate state of arousal.
She was kind, Ashmont had said.
She had no idea what her brand of kindness did to men like them.
He glanced up. The sun, trying to break through leaden clouds, cast a sickly light. Oh, good. Just what he liked best: plodding along to London in a downpour.
Yes, you poor, sad martyr. Travel in the rain. As though you haven’t done it time and again, at high speed.
But then he’d been drunk. Now he was all too sober. He should have drunk those additional tankards.
How much would he need to drink to wash her out of his brain?
Not too late to find out. He could hire a post chaise at the George. Then he could travel at better speed. He could drink a tankard or three while the stablemen made the chaise ready. And take a bottle with him in the carriage. With somebody else driving, he could drink himself blind.
Only two more miles, or not much more.
He’d no sooner thought it than the world about him darkened. Above, the clouds churned, turning black around the edges. A droplet splashed on the horse’s head. He heard another strike his hat. His uncle’s hat, rather. Though vastly superior in quality to the one he’d bought in Putney, it fit only a degree better.
More raindrops fell, faster and faster, pattering on leaves and scattering the road’s dust.
Lovely.
Why the devil hadn’t he stayed in Florence for one more blasted day?
He wouldn’t be here now.
The wedding would have been a fait accompli.
Or not.
At any rate, the bride would have been somebody else’s problem.
And he would never know what he’d missed.
His mount, untroubled by the rain, plodded on.
Ripley told himself to plod on. A little wet wouldn’t kill him.
&n
bsp; The rain beat down harder, and poured off the rim of his hat down his neck. Demons dug their daggers into his ankle.
He peered out from under his hat brim into the downpour.
On the near side stretched a common. No shelter there. Not many yards ahead on the right, though, at the edge of a tangle of bushes, stood a wooded area. He made his way there, and found a narrow track. He turned into it and rode on a short distance into the cluster of trees. They grew thick enough to keep off the worst of the deluge.
There he waited.
And waited.
His ankle throbbed. He needed a drink. He needed to fight with somebody.
