“Are we to turn this encounter into a fight?” the marquess asked in a tone that sounded inappropriately haughty. “I merely asked for a kiss, woman.”
“It sounded like a command to me,” Kate said. “And in future you may keep your hands to yourself, my lord. I am going outside to call the others.”
“Ah, I do believe we have arrived at the historic site,” a languid voice said from outside the cave. “Is anyone here before us, I wonder. Hello, there! Uppington? Moreton?”
“It is certainly not very imposing after all that climbing,” Lady Emma’s voice complained.
“Yes,” Kate called breathlessly. “We are here, Sir Harry. We win the prize.”
“The devil!” Uppington muttered, turning his back on Kate and folding his arms.
Sir Harry’s face appeared in the entrance, his fingers playing with the ribbon of his quizzing glass. He stepped inside. “I say,” he said, “this is most impressive, is it not? Just one moment, Lady Emma. I do believe one of us will have to leave before you can come in.”
He kept his back firmly against the doorway, his eyes lazily raking over Kate, whose relief quickly gave way to acute embarrassment. One side of her hair was down around her shoulders, her dress was twisted to one side. She felt flushed and breathless. Hasty hands flew up to straighten her dress and to smooth her hair back from her face and confine it to its knot at the back of her neck again. Sir Harry watched her the whole time, one eyebrow raised, one hand slowly twirling his quizzing glass. When she was almost respectable again, he bent lazily, picked up her bonnet, and handed it to her with a mocking half-smile.
“Yes, indeed,” he said, “quite impressive. I am not surprised that you are speechless, Uppington. I must say, though, that I should find living here extremely uncomfortable and inconvenient. One becomes used to one’s creature comforts. Mrs. Mannering, allow me to hand you up this rather high step. One moment, Lady Emma. Mrs. Mannering and I will come out so that you may join your brother in here.”
Kate clung to his offered hand, her own not quite steady, and stepped up into the blessed brightness and fresh air of the hillside.
“I am not at all sure that I want to go inside,” Lady Emma said. “It looks horridly dark and dirty.”
“It is surprisingly large and airy, in fact,” Sir Harry said. “Of course, holy men of the past did not care overmuch for cleanliness. Whoever lived here probably made a pilgrimage once a year to the lake for a bath-if it was a warm summer. It is hard to imagine such uncivilized ways, is it not?”
“Well, I have come this far,” Lady Emma said. “I might as well see the cave, though I find it vastly disappointing from the outside.”
Sir Harry walked to the lowest point of the clearing, cupped his hands around his mouth, and called for Mr. Moreton and Lady Thelma. Kate followed close behind him. She had not imagined that he could ever summon enough energy to call so loudly. But there were no answering cries.
“I shall take you down, ma’am,” Sir Harry said, turning to her with an expression that was both cynical and unsympathetic. “It would be quite a dreadful disaster if we missed our tea after all this exertion, would it not?”
“Yes,” Kate said, taking his offered arm almost eagerly.
They walked downhill in silence for the first minute. Then, instead of continuing the descent, Sir Harry guided her across the slope, parallel to the valley.
“I believe we should risk missing our tea and delay our return by a few minutes,” he said. “Your flushed cheeks and bright eyes are more suited to a boudoir than to an afternoon picnic, Mrs. Mannering. Did I interrupt a very interesting tête-á-tête?”
“You interrupted nothing, sir,” Kate said, bristling. “I am merely flushed and somewhat disheveled from the climb.”
“Nonsense!” he said. “I suggest that you are setting up a cozy future for yourself, ma’am. Is it to be a menage à trois when Uppington and Lady Thelma wed?”
Kate pulled her arm from his and rounded on him. “What a filthy insinuation!” she hissed. “You are despicable, sir. Do you think that when a woman is molested she is secretly delighted? Do you think that she deliberately invites such treatment? I hate you and your male arrogance and your sneering contempt for women.”
His eyes had narrowed. “Did he touch you?” he asked. There was menace in his voice. The drawl had disappeared for the moment.
“Oh, no!” Kate said, sawing at the air with one hand and raising her eyes to the sky. “I pulled my hair loose from its knot and dragged my dress askew merely because I thought such behavior would arouse ardor in such a slowtop. Had you arrived a short while later, sir, I should probably have progressed to baring my shoulders and kicking off my shoes. You gentlemen seem to find it so difficult to take a hint.”
“By ‘touch’ I meant ‘ravish,’” Sir Harry said quietly. Kate calmed down immediately. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “But for a few minutes I was not sure that I would escape. Shall we go down now? I am rather tired of the doings of this afternoon.”
And to her utter mortification she gave a loud hiccup of a sob and burst into tears. Good heavens, and the encounter had not even been that dreadful! She clapped her hands over her face. There was silence beyond her own world of choked-off sobs and gurgles and wet sniffs. She wondered if he had gone away, and hoped he had. How terribly humiliating! How would she ever raise her head and look him in the eye? The terribly cynical and bored Sir Harry Tate of all people! A hand pulled one of hers away from her face eventually and a large linen handkerchief was placed in it.
“Dear me!” the familiar languid drawl said. “And I thought Mrs. Kate Mannering scorned to be one of the weaker sex. Do dry your eyes, ma’am, and stop your sniffling. One thing I cannot abide is a bawling female.”
“G-go away then!” Kate said crossly on a shuddering inward breath. “I am not looking for your sympathy. And I would not be crying now, sir, but that I had a sleepless night and have not been feeling quite the thing today. I never cry.” She blew her nose loudly in the handkerchief and glared at him out of reddened eyes.
“Hm,” he said. “Quite disgusting. Your nose and your eyes vie over which are the redder. I do believe the nose wins because it also shines.”
“Oh!” Kate stamped her foot crossly. “I might have known you would not have an ounce of gallantry for a poor female in trouble.”
“Now, think a moment, Mrs. Mannering,” he said on a sigh. “If I had taken you in my arms and held your head against my shoulder and crooned soothing inanities into your ear, do you not think you would still be bawling? As it is, your emotion has been converted to anger, and your chin and cheeks have perhaps been saved from the same fate as your eyes and nose.”
