“Nana—where are you going?” Harriet’s voice came out sharper than she intended.
“Sebastian’s home. I have something I need to ask him.” She moved steadily back toward the door to the ducal bed chambers.
“Nana…he’s not here. He’s on his wedding trip with his bride.”
“NotthatSebastian, silly girl.MySebastian.”
Harriet raced ahead of the older woman in the hallway, nearly tripping on the long, narrow Aubusson carpet. “Come with me. Maybe Cook has some ginger biscuits. We can have a nice sit-down and tea in Grandpa’s old study.”
Her grandmother threw her a mischievous look. “He won’t like that. But we don’t care, do we?”
Harriet wrapped her arm around her grandmother’s frail shoulders and let out a sigh. She was exhausted and jittery from the constant knowledge of the man in the duke’s bed. Maybe she’d add a little Madeira to the tea in her cup.
Richard enjoyed sharinga story or two when old comrades-in-arms happened to cross his path, but he was not one of those soldiers who like to chew endlessly over old, perceived glories. What he and sailors on all of the ships that day in Algiers had done may have been heroic in the eyes of the public, but he’d lost too many good friends and men who’d served with him that day to celebrate such a battle.
He suspected Captain Thorne was feeling the same way. Their exchange of stories had slowed and then ground to a halt when, thankfully, a footman had arrived with lunch. He was surprised to realize his appetite was returning. The dizziness had subsided somewhat, and the pain of the knot on his head was fading with the administration earlier of Lady Blandford’s special calendula salve. The fact that the lady herself did the honors of rubbing her concoction over the bump on his busted nob might have had something to do with the recovery.
That and the liberal servings of willow bark tea she’d personally forced him to drink. He made each cup last as long as possible while she watched over him, much like she might supervise her stubborn eight-year-old son.
Sergeant Dawson had looked in earlier in the day, and Richard had sent him back to Falmouth to continue recruiting with Lady Blandford’s gracious offer of the family carriage to carry him there. He scrawled a hasty note for Dawson to have sent out to theBlack Condorso that Captain Bellingham would be apprised of what had happened and his condition.
With a jolt, Richard realized he’d never let a minor injury stop him before. Was he lingering to let his body mend, or was what he really craved a few more days of being cosseted by Lady Blandford? There had been scores of beautiful women who had crossed his path over the years, many with whom he’d enjoyed carnal pleasures, but never one that had lingered for long.
Being a soldier was a convenient excuse for pushing away from close entanglements. He’d loved all sorts of glorious, sensuous women in ports all over the Mediterranean. In fact, he considered himself a connoisseur. However, he’d been scrupulously careful not to leave a trail of fatherless bairns, at least not to his knowledge.
But after two days of lying abed in Lady Blandford’s havey-cavey household, he couldn’t stop thinking about the lush, long bright, coppery curls she kept so carefully under control during the day. The one thing he’d remembered in the dim lantern light before he’d crashed onto the cobblestones was the sight of the lady with bow drawn, her fiery hair loose and curling around her shoulders like an ancient Celtic warrior. Now he couldn’t stop thinking of her, ways to prolong his “recovery,” and what that long hair would look like spread around her creamy shoulders…in his bed.
And then there was her babbling grandmother who sneaked into the ducal chambers several times a day. She talked to him as if he were her late husband, confiding her regrets at leaving the theatre in Covent Garden. Lady Blandford and her grandmother shared the same emerald green eyes that mesmerized. A man could get lost in there. Now he understood how the old duke had abandoned all sense of propriety and swept an actress off the stage to make her his duchess.
Harriet concentratedon the far-off target set in the grass in a meadow behind the lodge. She drew back the bowstring taut and felt her shoulders and forearms tense. In this, her fourth shot at the target, her muscles were firing and her whole body heated with the exertion.
Just as she let the arrow fly, too late the sound of deep, hoarse barking and childish laughter floated across the air. “Nicholas,” she shouted. “Keep the dogs back.”
“But…Mother—.”
“No ‘but’s.’ Listen to me.” Her warnings fell on young, heedless, obstinate ears. Fleur, who loved to chase arrows, flew past her toward the target. Another arrow would be returned to Harriet covered in slobber, with chew marks.Sigh.
She turned and dropped down to her son’s level. Pushing back his hair from his forehead, she pulled his face toward hers. “You know I love you more than life itself, but you must stay away when I’m practicing targets. Max and Fleur could be hurt.”
When his lower lip trembled, she hastened to add, “You wouldn’t want them injured, would you? They’re your responsibility. They follow you everywhere. You have to think about them for a change.”
When he hung his head, she lifted his face again. “Some day you’ll be responsible for lots of people who live on your father’s lands. You need to practice putting others first, before you act selfishly.”
“I, I didn’t mean it…” A small sob escaped his quivering lips.
Wonderful. She’d made her son cry. At that moment, Fleur came racing back with the slobber-covered arrow and knocked the two of them onto the grass. It was impossible not to break into fits of giggles when a creature like Fleur was towering over you, spooling long threads of spittle down onto your face.
As if on cue, the dogs’ footman caught up to his charges and dragged them away. He produced flannel cloths from a pocket for Harriet and Nicholas to wipe off the dog slobber from their faces and the arrow.
“Thank you, Thomas. Nicholas and the dogs will accompany you back to the lodge.” Although her son flashed her a pleading look, he obediently padded behind the young footman who led them toward a long, winding trail through the woods.
Harriet took a deep, restorative breath and returned to her target practice. After another dozen, satisfying thunks near the center of the wooden bullseye, she walked toward the line of targets to retrieve her arrows.
Richard leanedtoward the window in the breakfast room at the rear of the lodge which looked out over a wide meadow. His mouth was dry from hanging open so long while watching Milady Amazon at her target practice. Shooting with a bow and arrow was not easy, which he’d learned as a boy back in County Meath.
He’d happened to see her at practice out the rear windows of the morning room where breakfast was kept on a sideboard. Richard had ventured out of his convalescent nest to sneak an extra cup of the cook’s steaming hot coffee. He hated ringing for servants to wait on him.
Richard calculated the distance her arrows traveled before finding their mark in the wooden targets. It would take a hell of a lot of strength behind a bowman’s shoulders to send an arrow arcing with enough speed and force to bury itself solidly next to the bullseye. Thank God she hadn’t loosed the arrow she’d been threatening him with the night he’d shown up on her doorstep. He wouldn’t have ended up convalescing in the duke’s chambers. He was pretty sure he would have disappeared into an unmarked grave somewhere on the estate, never to be heard from again.
