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“No.” How could she? “But you’re a rake, and rakes are undiscriminating.”
“When I’m drunk, maybe I’m less discriminating,” he said. “I’m not drunk now, though I wish I were.”
“I’m pedantic and boring,” she said. “And I wear spectacles.”
“Do you think that makes the least difference to a man?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe in a crowded ballroom,” he said. “But when one is alone with a shapely, pretty girl, one doesn’t care about her spectacles—or anything else she’s wearing.” He tried to get up. Wincing, he raised himself to a sitting position. And swore.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Stay,” she said. “Let me get a servant to help you. It’ll be easier on your foot.”
He looked blank. “Servant,” he said.
“I realize my behavior yesterday might lead a person to believe I’m a henwit,” she said. “However, in the normal course of events, I am practical and sensible to a fault. I did not come to your rescue unaccompanied. I’ve brought the coachman, John, and the footman Tom, and we’ve come in your aunt’s landau.”
“Good of you,” he said. “More comfortable traveling to London in the carriage.”
“I daresay, but not today,” she said.
“Olympia, I have to get to London.”
“So you’ve said, more than once,” she said. “Let’s stop and think, shall we? Let’s look at this in a logical manner.”
He lay back, letting his bare head fall on the wet leaves and moss and whatever insects were making their way through the woodland debris. He gazed up through the trees at the gloomy heavens. Then he turned his green gaze to her. “Yes, let’s,” he said.
“It’s more than twenty miles to London,” she said. “Camberley Place lies scarcely a third of that distance from here. From where you lie, do the skies look promising of anything but more rain? In the circumstances, do you not agree that the practical thing to do is to return to Lady Charles, rest for a day or two, then go to London? In a carriage.”
He closed his eyes for a long moment. Then, “Right.” He sat up. “Mind ran amok for a moment. But of course. Obvious. I can hardly take the carriage and leave you here. Very well. Get Tom.” He grimaced. “You ought to have brought him with you in the first place.”
“I was trying to keep up with Cato,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about the servants.”
“Not thinking,” he said. “Lot of that going about. Ashmont shouldn’t have let you out of his sight for a moment. Asking for trouble. And surprise, surprise. Here we are.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“He’s my friend,” he said.
It dawned on her at last, as it should have done moments ago, that his post-kiss frenzy was all about male honor. A gentleman, even one of Their Dis-Graces, didn’t poach on his friend’s preserve. Women were property, and in the eyes of the world she still belonged to Ashmont.
For a moment—for the shattering moment of that kiss—she’d thought Ripley felt something for her. But it was simply the male urge to conquer women. His urge had got the better of him, that was all. He’d spoken the plain truth. There was a reason unwed ladies weren’t supposed to be alone with men.
She’d never believed a man would exercise his urges on her, but it had happened. Now she truly understood, not simply in her brain, why the rule existed. If she hadn’t been so startled to feel what she’d felt when he pulled her against him, and if she hadn’t somehow brought to mind Mama’s explanation of marital intimacy and what Olympia had seen that day with the horses, she would have been swept along in the storm of feelings. And ruined.
She almost giggled, it was so outlandish: Lady Olympia Hightower, debauched in a moment of passion. Then she almost wept, because the odds were so very good that this had been the only moment of passion she’d ever experience.
She told herself not to get hysterical—he seemed to be doing enough of that for the two of them—and said, “Calm down. Only think how you’ve broadened my education.”
“That’s Ashmont’s job!”
“Let us look on the bright side.”
“Bright side. Good God.”
“When he discovers I’m not completely ignorant, he’ll realize he’s had competition,” she said. “This, if I believe you and your aunt, will make him more eager to please me. He doesn’t need to know who’s responsible, and I shan’t tell him.” She made herself smile brightly. “Do you know, Ripley, I believe I owe you thanks.”
Lady Charles’s sermon had given Ashmont food for thought. Some matters, which had appeared clear enough at the adventure’s outset, had since grown murky. After briefly considering the problem, he realized what his trouble was: He was thirsty.
Accordingly, he and Blackwood stopped at the Talbot Inn. Had they not done this, they would have passed the landau on the road, going in the opposite direction. Had the roof of the landau not been put up against the rain, they would have seen their quarry, and their quarry would have seen them, and matters would have turned out altogether differently.
But that wasn’t what happened. What happened was, idly looking out of the window, they saw a somewhat elderly landau traveling in the direction from which they’d come. Blackwood made a jocular remark about the carriage’s sedate pace.
That was as much as they noticed because the rain started again, with a fury, and the view from the window became a blur. Turning away from it, Ashmont said, “What do you reckon? Ought I to storm the castle immediately when I get to London? Go straight to Gonerby House to win the lady fair and keep her won, this time? Lady C seemed to deplore my lack of derring-do.”
“After the lady fair has traveled four or five hours, and scarcely had time to catch her breath, let alone rest from the journey?” Blackwood said. “Not to mention, do you suppose you’ll make the best impression on her—you with the fresh stinker and wearing yesterday’s clothes and, in short, not looking as pretty as usual?”
Ashmont gingerly touched his bruised eye. “Probably not,” he said. “Tomorrow, then.”
Chapter 11
“You let them go,” Ripley said to his aunt. “They were here and you let them go.”
They’d entered the Great Hall moments ago and learned of Ashmont and Blackwood’s visit.
Ripley stood, bracing himself on the arm of a settee near the fireplace. He gazed up at the Elizabethan artifacts adorning the walls and wondered why the Fates had decided to torment him the instant he returned to England.
“You had better sit down,” Aunt Julia said. “You’re as white as a sheet.”
“Do sit down,” Olympia said. “Do try to be a trifle less stupidly obstinate.”
Ripley sank onto the settee. He wanted to lie down. And be unconscious. His leg pained him, but not half so much as the thoughts crashing about in his head. He wasn’t used to so much thinking. No wonder he felt so weary.
“I suspect you’ll recover more quickly if you make use of your uncle’s invalid chair,” his aunt said.
“An invalid chair! Why not feed me pap as well?”
“Invalid chairs have footboards,” Olympia said.
Ripley gazed up at the ceiling.
“To support the foot,” she went on.
Visions appeared in his mind of fat, gouty invalids, rolling about in their chairs at Bath. How many satirical prints like that had he seen? And laughed at?
“If you let the injured foot rest in that way, duke, it will get better much more quickly.”
“An invalid chair,” he said. Somebody shoot me now, he thought.
“How art the mighty fallen,” said his aunt.
He l
ooked at her. “Very well, gloat. I’ve fallen, more than once. I feel like the devil. Lady Olympia was right. You were right. I should never have set out today. I should have been here when Ashmont and Blackwood arrived.”
“But you weren’t,” said Aunt Julia. “And I acted as I deemed best. Perhaps I acted in anger, but it’s done.”
“Angry about what? Didn’t you agree with me that Ashmont would come for Olympia?”
“I was displeased with his attitude, not to mention his appearance,” his aunt said. “Neither was calculated to reassure an uneasy young lady. Instead, he seemed to be advertising his thoughtlessness, carelessness, and recklessness.”
“Oh, he doesn’t need to advertise,” Olympia said. “I had no illusions, I promise you.”
“You ought to have done,” Aunt Julia said. “You ought to have had at least a few hopes and dreams on your wedding day. More important, he ought not to take you for granted. It did not seem to me today as though he’d studied to please you. Yet by now he must have realized that your disappearance was not a prank or a joke, and he has fences to mend.”
“His Grace with the Angel Face must have looked very bad, indeed, to throw you into such a pother,” Ripley said.
Had he been here, he might have thrown Ashmont across the room. What the devil was wrong with the man, making such a poor show when he might so easily have made a good one? Was he trying to drive Olympia further away? Or was he so conceited he thought he was always irresistible?
“He looked and smelled bad and acted worse,” his aunt said. “I hauled him over the coals, and I hope I gave him something to think about. Most assuredly, he gave me something to think about. The pair of them did. I didn’t like running the risk of their meeting Lady Olympia on the road and her having to fend for herself with that pair of blockheads. But she is a young woman of strong intelligence and will. And I did reckon long odds against the encounter. It seemed to me far more probable those two rakehells would make a detour to a race or a boxing match or wait out the rain in a tavern.”
