Heiress in Love (20 page)

When they saw him looking, their faces whitened and the boys scattered like spillikins. No matter. He’d let them go.

“Oh, stop!” cried Jane. “Let me down. I must help him.”

“No, I’ll do it.” He pulled up and handed her the reins. “Keep them moving, will you? I won’t be long.” He slanted a glance at her and one corner of his mouth twitched. “They’re a little fatigued, so you should be able to control them now.”

Her indignant snort made him grin. Before she realized he’d provoked her on purpose to take her mind off going after Luke, Constantine jumped down from the phaeton and followed in the direction the boy had taken.

His presence caused a stir among the villagers, but he didn’t take much notice, beyond politely tipping his hat and dispersing sundry greetings. They’d react in the same way if a two-headed cow was led through the high street. He was still Lord Roxdale of Lazenby Hall, even if mothers of nubile daughters crossed themselves as he went past.

The boy had disappeared in the general vicinity of the village green, so Constantine stepped onto the verdant sward that unfurled like a rug spread between the church and the market square.

An enormous horse-chestnut tree stood in the center of the green, perfect for climbing. He walked over to it and looked up. “Luke, you can come down now. You’re not in trouble, and I won’t embarrass you by seeking to punish those young ruffians. I just want to talk with you.”

No answer, save a small scuffle as the boy moved higher among the branches.

“Come down, will you? There’s a good chap,” said Constantine. “I’m getting a crick in my neck standing like this. Besides, any number of the good people of Lazenby are staring at me at this moment, wondering if I’m having a conversation with a magpie. They’ll dub me the mad Lord Roxdale if you don’t show yourself.
Not
an auspicious start.”

There was a snort, a kind of smothered chuckle. After a pause, Luke said, “Oh, all right, then.”

The boy came slithering down the branches, nimble as a monkey. But as he jumped to the ground, a loud rip rent the air. He held his arms wide and looked over his shoulder at his ripped jacket. He muttered a ripe curse. “Aunt Jane will skin me.”

Constantine took note of other rips and grass stains over his clothing. The boy didn’t seem hurt, just badly mussed. “Looks like someone’s already taken care of dusting your breeches for you. Who were they?”

The boy’s mouth turned mulish. “No one, sir.”

Constantine waited for a moment, but the boy wasn’t going to cry rope on anyone. “I see.”

Clearly, those bullies had given Luke a rough time of it, but the boy wasn’t a sneak. Constantine respected him for it and decided not to press him.

It occurred to him that he now stood in loco parentis to Luke and he ought to offer some sort of worldly advice on the subject of avoiding getting one’s nose bloodied. Or at least on the subject of giving a good account of oneself in the process.

“Come,” said Constantine. “Lady Roxdale is with me. We’ll drive you back to the Hall.”

Luke’s eyes shifted in the direction from which he’d run. “No, thank you, sir.”

Constantine raised his brows. “Thirsty for some more of the home-brewed, are you?”

“I don’t want you to drive me,” he muttered. “It’ll only make things worse.”

“I see.” What those “things” were, exactly, he couldn’t guess. But he had a notion Luke was correct; that his interests wouldn’t be served by the lord of the manor taking a hand in the matter. Constantine wouldn’t always be there to protect him. His interference might draw more of these boys’ taunts.

Still, he was reluctant to leave the lad. Clearly, the numbers hadn’t been even in that recent scuffle, and that jarred with Constantine’s innate sense of fairness.

He smiled, deliberately charming. “I think you’ve had enough punishment for today, don’t you? You’re full of pluck, but the odds weren’t in your favor. If you stay, I’m afraid I’ll have to answer to Lady Roxdale for the condition you return in. She’d have my hide if you are set upon again, and she’d be right.”

The boy remained obstinately silent. Well, why should he care if Constantine’s credit suffered with Jane, after all?

Constantine sighed. Jane
would
have his head for this, but it couldn’t be helped. Some matters were simply beyond the female ken. He set his palm against the tree. “Tell me, do you know how to get to the crossroads without going back along the high street?”

“’Course I do,” said the boy, a flicker of a proud smile lighting his woebegone face.

“Take that way, then. And mind you go straight home.”

Luke thought about this and gave a short nod.

Rueful, Constantine squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Off with you, now. Don’t dawdle.”

Constantine turned back and looked across the green to the high street, where Jane sat minding his horses and watching. Hell. He was going to catch it when she heard about this.

*   *   *

Jane certainly had her hands full while Constantine dealt with Luke; she’d underestimated the strength of his horses. As Constantine walked toward her with no Luke in sight, she blew out an exasperated breath. She’d love nothing more than to drive off and leave him stranded, but she wasn’t at all sure she could manage the beasts.

Fatigued, indeed! They were likely to rip her arms out of their sockets.

“Where’s Luke?” she demanded as Constantine swung himself back into the phaeton.

He took the reins and said, “He’s going home his own way.”

Jane buffeted his big shoulder with her gloved hand. It was like hitting rock. “You left him
alone
? Go back and get him!”

He turned to her and his green eyes were sympathetic. “I’m not going to do that. We came to an understanding. He’ll make his own way back to the Hall.”

“Make his own way?” she repeated. “He shouldn’t be here without his nurse in the first place. He must have given her the slip.”

“He’ll be perfectly fine,” said Constantine.

“You are an unfeeling brute! He was hurt and scared.
I
saw the look on his face.”

“Not so hurt he couldn’t scramble up and down that tree like a cat.” Constantine gave his horses the office and drove up the high street. “Trust me, it’s better this way.”

Jane all but bounced in her seat. “Trust you! Who do you think you are? You’ve been the boy’s guardian for all of five minutes and now you are an expert?”

“You would have marched in there and given those boys a scold, I suppose.” Constantine shook his head.

“You could at least have brought him back to the carriage. He’s just a little boy.”

He slanted a glance at her. “It may interest you to know that I’ve had some experience as a male of the species—and surprisingly enough, I was once a six-year-old boy. That does make me more qualified than you to judge the situation. And yes, dear Jane. In this case you are wrong.” He smiled at her. “And I am right.”

“Insufferable!” Jane angrily tugged at the ribbons of her bonnet, intending to retie them. She was all fingers and thumbs. Not least because when he smiled at her like that, her insides turned to mush.

He laughed. “Allow me.”

Before she could protest, he removed her hands from the black satin ribbon that knotted at her chin and pressed the reins into her grasp. Automatically, her hands closed over the leather straps. Her arms tensed for battle, but the chestnuts remained quiescent, perhaps aware their master was near.

She watched Constantine unbutton his driving gloves and strip them from his hands. Large hands they were, with long, capable-looking fingers.

He turned to her. “Now, let me see what we have here.”

His fingertips brushed the underside of her chin as he gathered the tangled ribbons of her hat. Tingling warmth radiated from that spot, like ripples in a pond.

She didn’t know why she’d allowed him to take over this task; it brought his compelling features in disconcerting proximity to hers.

Black brows drawn into a slight frown, Constantine worked at the stubborn knot. He was so close, Jane felt the warmth of his breath feathering over her lips. His irises were not pure emerald, as she’d thought, but a slightly lighter hue, flecked with black.

As he wrestled with the recalcitrant knot, Constantine muttered something under his breath, drawing her gaze to his mouth. The upper lip was chiseled and firm, the lower slightly fuller. As well defined as the mouth on a Greek statue—sensual, yet utterly masculine. She thought of those lips crushing hers in the muniments room that night. Her breathing hitched; her own lips parted in longing.

His gaze flickered up to her face. She blushed to have been caught staring at his mouth. Something dangerous burned in his eyes, but he only allowed her a glimpse before lowering them again to his work.

“There,” he said softly, letting the ribbons fall. She looked down to see that he’d retied them in an elegant bow.

Her lungs seemed to have seized in the moment his eyes had met hers. Jane managed to dredge up the breath to thank him. Her heart pounding, she waited until he’d put his gloves back on to hand him back the reins.

It took many moments to drag her mind back to the point she’d been making before that disturbing interlude. Luke. Had Constantine thought to distract her with all this tying of bonnet strings?

Embarrassment at his success lent an edge to her words. “Would you care to explain to me why, in all your mighty wisdom,
O masculine one,
you left a small boy to walk home by himself when he has been set upon by bullies, perhaps to face more of the same before he gets there?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” said Constantine. He was positively enjoying this; she could see it in the slight smile playing over his mouth.

He sobered. “Luke is being bullied for a reason. Perhaps it’s because he is small and an easy target; perhaps because he gets to live at the Hall and wear fine clothes. There could be any number of reasons that would seem trivial to you and me.”

“But—”

Constantine held up a hand. “So for us to come in like lord and lady high-and-mighty to rescue him would increase their resentment. And as I don’t intend to imprison the boy in the house, I expect he will come to the village again. And when he does, he’ll receive a worse drubbing than he got today.”

He found a place wide enough to turn the phaeton. While he was occupied with the maneuver, Jane thought about what he’d said.

Reluctantly, she had to agree that it made sense. And it reinforced a notion she’d had for some time: Luke needed a man in his life to deal with such things. Her love for him was not quite enough.

She sighed. “I suppose you are right. Though it kills me to say so.”

Constantine didn’t evince any sign of triumph at her admission. “Luke is not badly hurt, or I would have insisted on conveying him back to the Hall. He knows how to avoid the high street on his return. I don’t think there’s cause to worry that he’ll be set upon again today.”

Transferring the reins into one hand, he found hers with the other. He’d intended the gesture to comfort her, no doubt, but his touch shot through her body like a burning arrow, setting it aflame. With a gasp, she slid her hand away.

They were in the high street, for goodness’ sake!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

So much for his wicked intentions toward Lady Roxdale. Constantine grimaced. One couldn’t make love to a lady suffused with righteous anger over the bullying of her beloved boy.

He’d resigned himself that there would be no kissing those pretty lips on this particular outing. When she’d looked at him with such longing in those clear gray eyes as he tied her bonnet strings, he’d come dangerously close to ravishing her mouth and damning the consequences. Thank God he’d managed to restrain himself. That would not have ended well.

Disconcerting to find that brief interlude on the high street had affected him so powerfully. It was the kind of ploy he’d often used to get close to a woman, but never had such an innocent flirtation stirred such strong desires in him before.

He wanted, quite desperately, to make
her
want
him
. Not only as a solution to her problems, but as a husband, lord, and lover, too.

Unfortunately, the power of that desire made him clay in her hands. By the time they reached the Hall, he’d committed to doing a number of things in furtherance of Luke’s interests that he would never have done except to please her. He liked the lad, and he would certainly deal with the bullying in his own way. But the rest … He sighed. He was turning into a sad case.

When Constantine caught up with him later, Luke was unexpectedly recalcitrant. He stonewalled any discussion of the incident in the village no matter how casually Constantine approached the subject. Constantine tried, and so did Jane, but to no avail.

For the moment, there was nothing much Constantine could do besides give the boy some strategies to get out of fights altogether, and if pressed, with which to defend himself.

He’d imagined Jane would scarcely condone such violent measures and was surprised at her quick nod of acceptance when she saw what he was about. Winning her approval gave him the strangest feeling of warmth in the region of his chest.