Charlotte Louise Dolan (27 page)

Without conscious decision, he kicked Bête Noire into a gallop, setting himself a course that would intercept the path his wife was taking.

* * * *

Elizabeth’s thoughts were all on her husband when she heard the sound of horse and rider approaching rapidly. Turning, she recognized the huge stallion that only Darius rode.

“You may go back to the stables now, Billy,” she ordered in such a firm voice that for once he didn’t even try to argue.

What imp possessed her, she never knew. Instead of waiting for her husband to catch up, she kicked her own horse into a gallop, and the race was on.

She glanced back only once at her husband, then concentrated all her attention on the path ahead. Even with the head start, her mare had no real chance of beating Bête Noire, but Elizabeth didn’t mind. The wild ride was an exhilarating taste of freedom after the constraint of entertaining so many guests, and that was all she cared about.

Darius was caught off-guard—not only by his wife’s actions in suddenly galloping away from him, but also by the utterly primitive feelings that surged through him at her challenge. The blood was pounding in his veins in rhythm with the pounding of Bête Noire’s hooves, and he felt civilization fall away from him like a discarded cloak. Nothing mattered now except capturing his woman and mastering her.

Only at the last moment, when he swept past her and Elizabeth reined in her mount, did his rational side assert itself and demand that he abandon his impulse to drag her across the front of his saddle and carry her off with him.

“That was a magnificent race, but next time I shall ride Bête, and you may take dear old Juno, and then you will never catch us.” With a smile Elizabeth urged her mount forward, and Darius fell in beside her.

His blood was still heated, and looking at her with her face flushed, her eyes sparkling with excitement and her hair in slight disarray from the wild ride, did nothing to cool his ardor.

Never before had it been so difficult to bring his emotions under firm control, and he forced himself to look away from his wife, lest she read in his eyes how intense was his desire to put his hands around her trim waist and pull her from her horse and into his arms.

* * * *

Darius paced restlessly back and forth in his room, resisting the impulse to join his wife in her bed. After his morning’s ride, the thought of making love to her had never really been out of his mind, no matter what activities he had engaged in during the day.

If he would be honest with himself, his craving right now had nothing to do with securing the succession and everything to do with satisfying his own desire, and therein lay his dilemma.

With a groan he threw himself down on his bed and lay there feeling nothing but frustration. He remembered how Elizabeth had fed him sun-ripened berries, how her fingers had felt, touching his lips so gently, like an angel’s caress ...

He remembered how her mouth had looked stained with berry juice, how it had taken all his willpower not to kiss the sweetness from her lips ...

He remembered how she had taken her hat off to use as a basket to carry some berries back for Billy, how the sunlight had been trapped in her hair, how much he had wanted to pull the rest of the pins loose and bury his face in its heat—

A woman’s scream interrupted his thoughts and had him off the bed and into his wife’s room, his heart pounding from fear rather than from desire. “What’s wrong?”

“It wasn’t me,” she replied, scrambling out of bed and grabbing her dressing gown. “It came from one of the other rooms.”

She caught his arm as he headed past her toward the door. “You had better put some clothes on before you go out there,” she said with the hint of a smile, which faded when another shriek was heard, this time obviously one of rage.

Darius could hear doors opening and angry female voices in the hall. “My sisters are involved in this in some way, of that you may be certain.” Cursing under his breath, he dragged Elizabeth along to his room, where he pulled on his own dressing gown. Under no circumstances was he going to let his wife go out there alone, because it was bound to be unpleasant.

“Vulgar” was a better word to describe the scene that met his eyes—and the interested eyes of virtually every guest, invited and uninvited, who had all left their respective rooms and come down the hall to see what the trouble was.

Amelia and Cecily were shrieking imprecations at each other, and it took Darius only a few minutes to discover the source of their conflict. It would appear that Cecily had unexpectedly entered her husband’s bedroom, for whatever reason, and found Lord Dromfield sampling the charms of the dowager duchess.

Neither woman paid the slightest attention to the audience they had attracted, and Darius could have cheerfully wrung the necks of both of them.

“But I don’t understand,” Elizabeth whispered in his ear. “Surely your sister knows her husband has a mistress, and as she has brought her own lover here also, I fail to see why she is now so upset.”

Darius looked down at where his wife was peeking around his arm, watching the confrontation from a safe position behind his back. Did she truly not comprehend how these things worked?

“Lord Dromfield’s mistress is safely married,” he murmured in reply, “and thus is no threat. The dowager duchess, however, has no husband, and apparently Cecily feels dear Amelia might be trying to break up her marriage.” And in that, his sister was undoubtedly correct. Amelia would not balk at stealing another woman’s husband. But for the grace of God and a strong bolt on my door, he thought, she would probably have tried before this to sneak into my bed.

At that moment, Amelia, apparently frustrated beyond endurance, struck Cecily in the face with her fist. Without a moment’s hesitation, Cecily slapped Amelia so hard that she was thrown against the wall. Rebounding quickly, however, Amelia launched herself at Cecily and managed to get two handfuls of hair.

“Oh, I say,” remarked one of the men—Lord Vaudrey’s mistress’s husband, if Darius was not mistaken. “Can’t you control your wife better, Dromfield?”

In a show of sisterly support, which Darius had never before witnessed, Lucy came to Cecily’s assistance, in a manner of speaking. “Control your own wife, you bastard, and in the future keep her out of my husband’s bed.”

Before Darius could intervene—and indeed, he had no intention of interfering with anyone’s pleasure—Lord Vaudrey’s mistress had a firm grip on Lucy’s hair, although it was not clear to Darius if the woman was attempting to defend her husband’s honor or her own. More than likely, she was just using the occasion to settle old grudges.

About this time the matchmaking mamas were for the most part attempting in vain to drag their daughters away from such a vulgar scene. The eligible bachelors, on the other hand, were using the occasion to lay bets as to which of the women was going to emerge the winner. A cheer went up when somehow Lord Dromfield’s mistress got involved, and the betting became even heavier when Cecily’s lover’s wife attacked Amelia from the rear.

Darius folded his arms and leaned against the wall and enjoyed the whole farce until, that is, he caught sight of Dorie, her eyes wide with fascination, trying to peek through the crowd of men surrounding the active combatants, at which time he decided things had gone far enough.

Shouting orders to the assorted husbands to control their wives, he himself waded into the fray and bodily pulled Amelia away from the two women ranged against her.

After a slight hesitation, the other men followed suit, with the bachelors crying foul for spoiling their bets, until one sharp command from Darius convinced them it would be prudent to retire to their own rooms.

In a remarkably short space of time the hallway was cleared, and there remained only the problem of Amelia, which Darius callously dumped onto Munke’s shoulders.

“What am I supposed to do with her?” his batman-turned-valet asked, eyeing askance the disheveled, half-naked woman who was trying unsuccessfully to interest someone in her tears.

“Do whatever you want,” Darius retorted. “Just get her out of my house at once.”

A quick check of the master suite showed his wife was not there, so he went in search of her. He met her coming out of Dorie’s room.

“Is she all right?” he asked.

“I am afraid she is never going to have the proper sensibility for a young lady of the
ton,”
his wife replied. “Instead of being thoroughly shocked at what she has seen and heard this evening, she seems to be mainly mad at you for interrupting the battle before there was a clear winner.” Elizabeth headed back down the hallway toward their rooms.

“Munke accused me today of neglecting you both, and I am afraid he has the right of it. I fear Dorie has been spending more time than she ought in the kitchen and stables.” Darius opened the door for his wife and then followed her into the bedroom.

“She will not come to any harm associating with the servants here,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “But I believe we must have a serious discussion about your neglect of your wife.”

With a growl of mock anger at her impertinence, he preceded to give her all the attention she desired, and no thoughts of duty versus honor interfered with the taking and giving of pleasure.

* * * *

Darius and Dorie sat on the little hill behind Colthurst Hall and watched the coaches and carriages departing at random intervals. The house party was at an end, thanks to the uproar during the night.

The matchmaking mamas were naturally determined to remove their offspring from such wicked company while their daughters’ innocence was at least somewhat intact. The bachelors, although they would never impress anyone with their intelligence, were at least smart enough to want to put as much distance between themselves and the fair Amelia as possible.

As for Lucy and Cecily and their ménage, Darius had given them their marching orders himself, with Kelso instructed to make sure there were no contrived delays with the departures.

By tomorrow the story of the exciting events at Colthurst Hall would be all over London, and in three days’ time, Darius estimated, people in Yorkshire would be clucking their tongues at the new scandal attached to his sisters’ names ... and to Amelia’s.

Which meant that it would be well-nigh impossible to rid himself of the dowager duchess for years to come. Unless, of course, he paid someone to kidnap her and put her on a ship bound for the colonies of Australia.

Beside him Dorie sighed. “Florie explained to me that this was the way life is, but I didn’t want to believe her.”

“What did she tell you?” Darius wasn’t sure why Dorie had been so insistent upon have a private talk with him, but she had seemed so upset about something, he had agreed without hesitation and had suggested taking a walk out to this hilltop, where he and Algernon had enjoyed so many long conversations.

“She said all men take mistresses, and married women can have lovers, and nobody thinks anything about it. I was sure she was exaggerating, but now I guess I have to believe her.” There was a long silence, then she said in a little voice, “I don’t think I want to get married—ever.”

Darius turned to look at Dorie seated cross-legged on the grass beside him, her slumped shoulders conveying her disillusionment more eloquently than her words. He had no idea what to tell her. For some reason he had never understood, many of the young soldiers in the regiment had brought their problems to him, but he had never before found himself in the role of confidant to a young girl, and he was not at all certain he was adequate to the task of advising her.

He had no experience playing the part of an older brother, but for the first time he understood how strong the ties between a brother and sister could be, understood the desire to protect, which could drive a man to defend his sister’s honor with a dueling pistol—or cause a young boy like Nicholas to face an older man with the demand that he compensate for the damage his actions had caused. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a husband for a husband ...”

“Not all marriages are like the ones you have seen here.” Darius cast around in his mind to try to come up with an example of a better marriage. “My aunt and uncle, for example, were faithful to each other.”

“Were they in love?”

He wanted to lie and say they had been passionately in love, but his own code of honor would not let him twist the truth. “They were fond of each other. Theirs was an arranged marriage, I believe, which was more common in those days. But they did have an affection for each other.”

“I don’t think I could bear that.” Dorie’s voice broke, and she turned her head away from him. Darius suspected she was trying not to cry.

“But in your case,” he said, in an attempt to cheer her up, “I am sure that the men will all fall madly in love with you, so you won’t have any problem on that score.”

There was a mighty sniff, and without a word Darius pulled out his handkerchief and offered it to his companion. She wiped her eyes and then blew her nose in a manner that was not at all dainty and feminine, but that endeared her to him all the more.

“Well, I don’t want all those moonlings casting themselves at my feet.”

“Moonlings?”

“Yes! I have spied on them.” She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. “You might as well know the awful truth. I have this terrible habit of hiding when we have company and listening to what is said. There is this little curtained alcove adjoining the drawing room in our town house, you see, which as far as I can ascertain has no purpose at all except as a place to conceal oneself. And what I have observed from there leads me to the conclusion that the vast majority of men are frivolous, boring, self-centered ... Oh, I can’t begin to describe how tedious and lacking in common sense they are.”

Never before had Darius considered the situation from the woman’s point of view, but now he had to admit Dorie was probably right. Offhand, he could not think of a single man in his acquaintance who was worthy of her hand. He foresaw difficulties two years in the future when she reached marriageable age.