All for You (15 page)

It had been at Payneswick, though they hadn’t been in a group there. She had no idea who they were, but she could safely say she wasn’t particularly interested in finding out.

“Let’s go,” Stephen said.

Peaches realized he was talking to her and considered taking umbrage at his bossiness, but she was too busy being towed toward the stables. She caught a gander of the small fight Irene was having with her horse and decided that whatever Stephen picked for her couldn’t be worse than that hell beast. She wondered if the little cluster of women still dragging their feet were going to tear each other to shreds, then saw she needed have no fear. Once they seemed to reconcile themselves to the fact that she was the one walking with Stephen, a visible yet unspoken truce was struck and they turned as one to watch her.

She would have told them there was no need to be worried about her because she didn’t even like their guy, but she didn’t have a chance. She looked at Andrea, who was standing ten feet away, watching the whole thing with obvious amusement. She cast the only person she could reasonably call a friend a pleading look, but Andrea shook her head slowly. Peaches decided she could either face the Dawdling Debutantes or ignore them. So she ignored them.

She followed Stephen, but not too closely. Those gals had riding crops and she didn’t want to meet the business end of them. She also didn’t particularly want to get up on a horse, but she had the feeling she wasn’t going to get out of it.

Stephen walked up and down four rows of stalls, soon joined by a man Peaches could only assume was the head groom. He was either intimidated by Stephen—and that she could understand—or he was seeing if Stephen had any clue what he was looking for. Stephen finally stopped, considered, then looked at the man.

“Miss Alexander has extremely limited experience on the back of a horse,” he said.

“How do you know?” Peaches said, before she thought better of it. She thought refraining from adding
smarty-pants
showed extreme self-control.

Stephen looked at her and raised one of his eyebrows. Peaches wished desperately for somewhere to sit down—because the thought of getting on a horse was terrifying. Yes, that was it. It
had absolutely nothing to do with the way Stephen had reached out and was gently stroking the nose of that beast in front of her, or that small smile he flashed that self-same creature.

The man was nicer to horses than he was to her. That was surely reason enough to want to slug him, wasn’t it?

“I believe this lad here will suit her,” Stephen was saying to the stable master, “but I will defer to your opinion, Andrews. Her Grace, the lady Raphaela, spoke very highly of your judgment.”

Andrews looked as though Stephen had offered him the chance to go on a quest and be at the head of the procession. He seemed to be fighting a very pleased smile as he nodded. “Gunther is a perfect choice, my lord Haulton. He’s a fine, old fellow, but always eager for a bit of exercise. I’ll have him saddled immediately.”

And immediately was just how fast he was saddled. Peaches found herself standing next to Stephen, shaking, as a saddle that looked wholly inadequate to giving her anywhere to sit was brought and applied to the back of a horse that had to have been a gazillion feet tall.

“He’s big,” Peaches said, her mouth dry. “Bigger than the other one.”

“Aye, miss,” Andrews said, looking at her seriously, “but he’s the gentlest one here. He’s schooled scores of riders without losing a one.”

“Schooled
them
?” she squeaked.

The groom only winked at her and walked off to see to his charge. Peaches looked up at Stephen.

“How did you know to pick this one?”

“Nobility school.”

She decided what made her want to punch him the hardest was that she was never quite sure when he was teasing and when he wasn’t. She scowled at him. “Not galloping down the stairs of your father’s hall on a stick horse, waving a sword over your head and bellowing like a banshee?”

“The de Piagets do not bellow,” he said calmly. “We express our emotions in measured tones.” He started to walk away, then looked over his shoulder. “And it wasn’t a stick horse, it was a rocking horse named Dante that scraped my mother’s floors to bits.”

Before she could comment on that, she was swept up into intrigues and looks of alarm and disdain. And that was just her interactions with the horse.

“A leg up, miss?” the head groom asked.

Why not?

B
y
the time she had bathed, dressed for dinner, then managed to choke most of it down, she had had it. Country house parties were just not for her. No matter how gentle her horse had been rumored to be, she’d been convinced the entire morning she was a heartbeat away from landing on her face. She had prayed she would simply survive the ride after which she would have gone straight to bed with visions of fairy tales still dancing in her head.

Only then she would have missed the current, singular experience of having the Duke of Kenneworth seat her next to him in a chair closest to the fire and flirt with her.

As he was currently doing.

She hadn’t been born yesterday, so she knew he was hitting on her. And she had to admit she was utterly, completely, thoroughly flattered and all aflutter. He was just so … just right.

She glanced across the salon not because she needed to, but because she always wanted to know where Stephen was so she could avoid him. He, unlike David, was just wrong. That morning had been a perfect example of just how wrong he was.

He had gone out of his way to ride next to her, no doubt so he could mock her later when he had time to do a proper job of it. So what if he’d carried on a conversation that she could easily hear about his first lessons on the back of a horse, which he of course could hardly remember because he’d been at it so long? If he had bored those around him with a droning discussion of beginning-rider technique, apparently he just hadn’t cared. No matter what his mother might have thought,
she
was convinced his manners definitely needed a polish.

Unlike David Preston who probably taught advanced studies in manners at Stephen de Piaget’s nobility school.

“I’ll be back in a flash, love,” David said, smiling just for her as he rose. “Off to refill the glass, of course.”

Peaches nodded and smiled, though she couldn’t understand
why his numerous servants couldn’t have seen to his glass. Maybe he was trying to show her what an ordinary guy he was.

Unfortunately, that left his seat open. Irene Preston flopped down into it, grumbling loudly.

“All Haulton wants to talk about is his ridiculous charities,” she snapped. “This is a bloody party, not a selection of potential donors.”

“Language, Irene,” Raphaela said mildly. “And I don’t think Lord Stephen views your friends as potential donors. He’s simply looking for something to add to the conversation besides his views on footballers and their scandals.”

“Oh, Mother, you’re so naive.”

Peaches didn’t think Raphaela was naive at all, but decided it was best not to offer her opinion. It was instructive enough to simply listen to the conversation around her and try to look as if she were interested.

Stephen? Charities? She could hardly believe it. She looked up into the mirror and saw David talking to Stephen, looking as if he were trying to talk him into something. Perhaps David had his own list of charities he contributed to. Stephen continued to say
no
in very calm, measured tones—he was a de Piaget, after all—which eventually left David saying something even she could see was very foul before he turned and stalked away.

She tried to concentrate on the ensuing discussion of Paris Fashion Week being carried on between Raphaela and Andrea, but she found that she was very distracted by the memory of the missing Duke of Kenneworth, who had flattered and flirted with her so deliciously that she was still feeling very weak in the knees. She patted her knees for good measure, just to be sure. Yes, very weak. In fact, it was probably for the best that she was still sitting just so she could recover. When it came to David Preston, it was best to stay put so her limbs weren’t put under undue strain.

Not like that horrible heir to Artane and no doubt numerous other titles who didn’t make her knees weak; he made her feet want to carry her off in another direction, quickly.

She was slightly surprised to find that others weren’t making tracks for the door. As she watched Stephen in the mirror she had to admit, very grudgingly, that the man could certainly work
a room. She’d seen it the day before, but she had thought it was a fluke.

She studied him a bit longer in the mirror and had to concede that at least he didn’t seem to be boring anyone with obscure details about medieval battle strategies. David had given up on him, but other men actually seemed to be talking to him about, well, football from what she could hear.

The women, that trio of debutantes plus a fair number of other guests, seemed to be keeping themselves from brawling to get near him only out of respect for the antiques in the room.

“Dukes’ daughters.”

Peaches looked at Raphaela. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”

“Those three glaring daggers at you are dukes’ daughters,
chérie
,” Raphaela said, in French. “Perhaps we’ll have a walk in the garden tomorrow where I might tell you about their families.”

“Or we could talk about compost.”

Raphaela laughed lightly. “Are you not interested at all in Lord Haulton?”

“Not at all.”

“Are you interested in my son?”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Peaches asked honestly. “He’s perfect.”

Raphaela only lifted one eyebrow briefly, then turned to Irene and English again.

Peaches had no idea what to make of that exchange, so she decided it would be wisest to make nothing of it at all.

She couldn’t deny that she was rather glad when the evening wound down and she was able to say good night. David was still nowhere to be found, but Peaches saw several other men were missing as well, so perhaps there had been some late-night football on the telly.

She was slightly surprised to have Raphaela walk her to her room, with Stephen and his gentleman’s personal gentleman following fifty feet behind them. Raphaela seemed not to notice as she deposited Peaches in her room with a gracious good night and retreated back up the way. Peaches wasn’t sure what to make of Stephen leaning against the wall, watching her instead of his host’s mother. Maybe he wanted his overcoat back.

She looked for it inside, but it was gone, perhaps returned to
its owner. What was left, however, was Edwina sitting on her stool, quite obviously still in charge. Edwina rose majestically and gestured to one of the hooks.

“Something,” she said gravely, “has arrived.”

Peaches’s first thought was that it was an eviction notice, but since there wasn’t all that much to be evicted from, she wasn’t going to stress over it. She watched as Edwina reached for a garment bag that was excessively long and excessively expensive-looking and thought she should probably just sit down.

So she sat down on the end of her bed and looked at her maid expectantly.

“Are you prepared, miss?”

Peaches thought about tossing off some remark that she hadn’t seen a wheatgrass juicer in the kitchen so she was less prepared than she might otherwise have been, but the moment seemed to call for seriousness. She sat up straight and looked at Edwina.

“I think I am as prepared as I’ll manage to be,” she said honestly.

Edwina frowned, as if she’d just taken measure of the state of the queen’s armada and found it not quite up to snuff, but good enough for the battle at hand. She reached for the zipper of the garment bag, then looked at Peaches.

“Your gown, miss.”

Peaches gasped. It was better than fainting, which was her first inclination.

It looked as if her fairy tale might be coming true after all.

S
tephen
was nervous.

He wasn’t accustomed to being nervous. The fact of the matter was, he was too damned old to be nervous. His blood pressure might occasionally find itself elevated during a spirited argument over this medieval detail or that, and his pulse might race now and again when seeing one of his competing colleagues sneaking into the back of his lectures to steal his academic discoveries, but a simple case of nerves? Never.

Then again, he had never in his life had the dreams of a woman he was hopelessly fond of riding on his ability to send his valet off with a credit card to see her properly dressed. Even though being unsettled over the potential for sartorial disasters was ridiculous, he was unsettled nonetheless.

Because even though the goods had been delivered, there was still the possibility that the gown would be too long and the shoes too tight.

He suppressed the urge to rub his hands over his face and instead clasped them behind his back where they would be out of his way. That had the added benefit of rendering himself incapable of flinging either vintage dishes or modern fire irons at
the indiscreet Duke of Kenneworth, who had spent the previous night gambling with funds he didn’t have. Stephen was quite sure Kenneworth planned to spend the night lying in front of them gambling with something quite a bit more precious—namely Peaches Alexander’s heart.

He wished he drank, for he would have indulged in a post-brunch double. Wasn’t it enough that he was wringing his hands—figuratively, of course—over the possibility that shoes and a dress wouldn’t suit? Did he also have to face the fact that he might be completely mad for a woman he wasn’t quite sure he should like and definitely shouldn’t love?

He watched Kenneworth walk around the room, attending to his hosting duties, and suppressed the urge to cross the room and plow his fist into the duke’s face. The man was notorious for finding innocent lassies, wooing them into more than just darkened corners, then dropping them without troubling himself over the mess he’d left behind. If Stephen had had a sister, he would have forbid her any association with the lout. As it was, he did have a cousin or two who had had the misfortune of a brush with the man, but he’d nipped that in the bud.