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He was a husband. Although his bride did not strike him as high strung, she was an innocent. He had a duty to ease her beyond any shy skittishness. Young girls could be wrought with unnecessary fears of the wedding night, especially when they didn’t have a mother to explain things.
Who knew what his bride had been told.
Just like him, motherless from a young age. Missing whatever it was mothers provided. In this case, what to expect on a wedding night. Fears could escalate beyond reason. He’d heard of such scenarios.
It would do neither of them a bit of good to have her shivering and tearful beyond common sense. A bride’s nerves were no small factor. Prodded by worry, he opened the double doors to her parlour, stepped over the threshold, listened for sobs. Nothing. No voices, no footsteps. Quiet.
The blasted maid had forgotten.
Without any more hesitation, he headed for his Duchess’s bedchamber, fully prepared to give her maid a thorough set down if he found his bride’s head buried in the pillows, stifling the sound of weeping. Calming a distraught wife was not in his plans this night.
He stepped past the fanciful, gilded furniture favoured by women ages past, crossed the Aubusson carpet. Décor his bride might well change. But not before the wedding night.
Once more, he hesitated at a doorway, miffed by his own reluctance to act. A loud crash and curse swiftly changed all that. Without the slightest qualm, he thrust the tall, panelled door open, strode into the chamber, and stilled, too stunned by the unimaginable tableau to move. Thank God for his bride’s lengthy preparations. A quick glance confirmed she was not there. No doubt still in her dressing room readying herself for the wedding night.
Instead of his bride, he found a filthy little urchin bent over an overturned table. A shattered vase, bruised rose petals, and broken stalks lay strewn at his soggy feet. The lad had a huge bundle, nearly as big as he was, slung over one shoulder. The fabric, the only clean thing about him, was no doubt from the stripped bed.
His bed linens. By God, the imp was stealing from his home and using his sheets to carry the loot off! In less than a blink, Summerton took it all in, but that slight hesitation proved enough time for the boy, initially as frozen as Summerton, to act first. One moment they stared at each other, the next the nimble rascal raced straight for the open French windows leading to the balcony.
Summerton roared to life, shouting, “Stay where you are! We’ve trouble out here!” to his bride, and charged after the thief.
The raggedy young scamp tossed his bundle over the railing. Summerton cringed in anticipation of the clanking crash of priceless candlesticks and crystal. It landed with a soft thump, softer even than the boy’s final leap from the curlicues of stone.
He’d managed it all with agile deftness. Damn the imp. How many times had he climbed that wall? Swift as a sparrow, the child abandoned his haul and pelted across the grounds, heading straight for the woods that surrounded St. Martins.
“George!” the Duke bellowed for the night time groundskeeper, fully aware there was no hope for it. By the time George arrived, the rascal would be well and truly gone.
Alfred Henry Bertram Edgwater, Duke of Summerton, Earl of St. Martins, slipped off his finest damask dressing gown and stepped out of his Italian leather slippers to better scale the stonework. He, too, had practice, not with this particular wall but one very similar to it, having, after all, been a boy once himself. As long ago as that had been, he made good time.
Caught up in the chase, he forgot his bride, that he even had one, other than to chastise his own foolishness in dithering over whether to enter her chamber or not.
“George!” Summerton shouted again for the man whose job it was to ensure nothing like this ever happened.
Fuelled by fury that anyone would deign to steal from him, Summerton didn’t feel the sharp edge of stone or the prick of thistles. He didn’t hear George’s shouts, or the barks of dogs let loose. He didn’t even hear his own breathing. Determined to outdistance the scamp, he used his one advantage. Long legs. His little adversary did not have them, but Summerton did. As they closed in on the woods, he neared the boy and sprang, tackling the lad with a hard flying leap. Their ‘umphs’ mingled. Summerton cursed the squirming boy — “Damn you, you little wastrel!” — as he wrestled to subdue him, avoiding some, but not all, of his determined kicks and pummelling fists.
“Stop it!” Summerton commanded, as he flipped the child over, sending his cap flying.
A cloud of thick golden hair escaped with a billowing scent of lavender. A familiar sensual fragrance, one Summerton was particularly fond of, but he had never been quite so finely attuned to as now. With this absconder. For the second time that evening, both Summerton and his prey stilled, frozen as ice on a pond that teemed with life below the frigid surface.
“Caroline?” Incredulity blunted his words. “Caroline?” This couldn’t be possible. It made no sense.
Up until eight that very morning, he had been the most eligible bachelor in the whole of England, failing finances be damned. No, not the whole of England. The whole of the British Empire. Every matchmaker, persistent mama, and giggling young lady of the ton had vied for his attention. He had been a veritable catch. A man chased from ballroom to country party to ballroom. He was not some besotted fool left staring at the soot-streaked features of a fleeing bride.
Their movements mirrored each other, chests rising, falling, gulping breaths after the effort of the chase. Fury fanned like a blacksmith’s bellows. She had only needed to say no.
“What the bloody hell are you doing?”
He slid off her, placing himself between her and the Hall before anyone could spot them. As he reached for the fallen cap, a massive bloodhound clambered up and wedged between them to slobber kisses all over Caroline’s face. Summerton recoiled, even as Caroline twisted and wrapped her arms around the beast. Those sobs Summerton had so feared surfaced as she buried her head in the plentiful folds of the dog’s neck.
“Seigneur Baver, Seigneur Baver! You are alive,” she wailed.
Summerton snorted. Lord Drool? Well-named. He swiped at a string of slobber that ran along his arm. But why would she imagine her dog dead? Of course the bloody animal was alive. All the bloody animals she’d collected over the years were alive and faring very well, eating grain and meat in his stables. Where had she thought they’d gotten off to?
Caroline pulled back, eyes on the dog. “How did you find me?” she asked, as if Summerton, who was perfectly capable of answering her question, weren’t right there beside her.
“With his nose,” Summerton said, thrusting her cap at her. “Put this on.” And he held up his hand to ward off George, who’d just rounded the far corner of the Hall with half a dozen baying dogs on leads.
Caroline jammed her hair under the cap, filling the floppy fabric as completely as straw filled a rag doll. Summerton watched her as he tried to tamp down anger with reason.
