But he was already striding for his mount. “You need to be seen by a physician after that fall. It’s possible that you struck your head and you’re none the wiser. I wasn’t yet over the rise when you were thrown, so I didn’t see it for myself.”
“My legs are in working order,” she protested, “as are my faculties. I insist you release me.”
But even as she said the obligatory words, she had to admit that there was something lovely about being suspended in the duke’s strong arms. Something alarmingly delightful about being cradled against his broad chest. She turned her nose into the fabric of his coat and gave a discreet sniff.
Ah, there was his rich scent, masculine and earthy. At this proximity, she could discern the shadows of his whiskers stippling his wide jaw. What would it feel like to press her lips there, feel the rasp against her mouth and tongue? Would he taste like a woodland god?
“You’ll ride with me back to Boswell Manor, and that is final,” he ruined her rampant thoughts by issuing a ducal decree.
She jerked back to look up at him, abandoning her lascivious enjoyment of his strong throat and the oddly alluring ridge of his well-defined Adam’s apple. “I’m capable of walking and riding on my own, Duke. I insist that you cease this nonsense.”
“Lady Boadicea, you are to be my wife,” he snapped, finality in his baritone. “You will ride with me, and upon our return to Boswell Manor you will be seen by my personal physician.”
His wife.
Yes, she would be that, and heaven help them both. Mustering up her common sense, she chased away any lingering, foolish fire such a reminder lit in her belly. It was her baser nature that attracted her to him, and she’d read about as much in Bingley’s naughty books. Perfectly natural. It couldn’t be helped. The best she could hope for was that he would wish to live separate lives once they were wed, which would suit her fine. She could pursue her cause and he could continue to haunt the halls of Boswell Manor, thinking everyone else beneath him.
“I am not yet your wife,” she was compelled to argue. “Therefore, you have no jurisdiction over me. I demand that you stop this barbaric treatment of me and put me down forthwith.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he continued to stalk through the grass to his mount, eyes fixed to the horizon. “Do shut up, Lady Boadicea.”
Well, he certainly did like to use her words against her, didn’t he? The fight seemed to drain from her then, dispersed by the shock still coursing through her system and her rapidly pounding pulse, which had yet to slow to its normal pace. What was the harm in letting him win one of their battles, she reasoned as she stole another discreet sniff of his person.
Just the one, for there would most assuredly be many more awaiting them.
here must be something wrong with him.
He was pacing a hole through the carpet of the sitting room outside the duchess’s bedchamber as his mother and Lord and Lady Thornton looked on. He didn’t give enough of a damn to stop, regardless of how many dark looks of admonishment his mother sent his way and in spite of the quizzical glances Thornton and his marchioness directed toward him.
Dr. Martindale had been within the chamber with Lady Boadicea for—a consult of his pocket watch revealed—thirty-one minutes and forty-nine seconds. Too bloody long by his estimation. Perhaps the frustrating chit had actually done herself grave injury. If she had, he shouldn’t care more than the natural human inclination to not wish ill upon another.
Why, then, did his chest feel as if it had been seized in the grip of a giant? Why did his heart pound and his palms go damp? Why could he not stop trekking up one end of the chamber and down the other like a bloody lunatic?
He didn’t know. It didn’t make sense. He shouldn’t be worried about her. He shouldn’t care so much that he couldn’t think of anything but her, and what the damn doctor would reveal when he at last came through the door.
Lord knew she’d brought upon her fall with her own rash behavior, and she was the sort of female who had never been checked. He could see that she must have been a handful for her parents, who had likely pawned her off on her sister and Thornton to relieve themselves of the Sisyphean task of getting her to behave. She was all brash, unapologetic energy, going about her life like a gale of wind.
And while everything about her drove him to distraction—the inherent wrongness of her, the blatant disrespect for propriety, the vulgar books, the bright dresses, the tongue that couldn’t be tamed, the lush figure she didn’t bother to hide—yes, while everything about her drove him mad, he had been consumed with fear when he’d cleared the ridge and seen Damask Rose galloping away, rider-less.
That fear had lodged into his chest with the force of an ax blade, and all he’d been able to think about was getting to her. Finding her. Making certain she wasn’t dead. In the frenzied moments of his race across the field to where he’d spotted her fallen form, he had wondered what he would do if he found her dead, neck broken. The sudden anguish within him had been choking.
But she wasn’t dead. Wasn’t even injured, if she was to be believed. Certainly, her rapier wit had not been damaged in the fall. She had flayed him alive with her tongue for the hundredth time in their incredibly abbreviated acquaintance.
“Will you not sit, Bainbridge?” his mother asked yet again in her signature tone that was half disapproval and half rebuke at all times. “You must not overset yourself. Dr. Martindale is seeing to the Harrington chit’s wellbeing.”
“Her title is Lady Boadicea Harrington,” the Marchioness of Thornton said with soft warning. Her flashing blue eyes were not unlike Bo’s, though he couldn’t think them half as lively.
He turned to stalk back across the sitting room, which had been stripped following Millicent’s death and had been redecorated at the sole discretion of his mother. This meant that it was a godawful combination of the gaudy and the severe. There was far too much gilding about, though he took comfort in the fact that the chamber had undergone a complete change. The furniture was old and heavy and looked as if it fit more in the last century than in the current one. His mother’s fondness for mid-century oil pastorals was evidenced on every wall, as was her love of stripes.
“Yes, forgive me as I am quite overset by the recent turn of events and my constitution was not a fortified one to begin with,” his mother said with obvious insincerity. “Bainbridge, do stop pacing. You’re making me seasick.”
He ignored her, pacing to the other end of the chamber. It was either move his legs or give in to the demons trying to claw him apart. Something about seeing Lady Boadicea laid low, something about the turbulence of fear within him, had brought everything down upon him. He longed for a drink, but he would not have one.
Not until he knew she was healthy. And perhaps not even then.
“You should not have brought her here to the duchess’s apartments,” the dowager continued, apparently unimpressed by his refusal to do her bidding. “It is vulgar and improper, Bainbridge. What will our guests think? She is not yet your duchess, and she has no place here.”
“For the final time,” he gritted, “I carried Lady Boadicea in from the servant’s stair so as to attract the least amount of attention. It was either bring her here or carry her the entire way to the west wing where anyone could have seen her and made us both further fodder for gossip.”
