Page 2 of The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

Elliot heaved a sigh, casting his head back in defeat. “Blast it, Kate, I do take your meaning. Drew is perfectly perfect in every conceivable regard, and I am the incurably irresponsible black sheep of the family—oof.” He wheezed as a straggling lamb pranced across his midsection in its efforts to catch up to its mother further up the field.

Kate smothered a giggle behind her palm. It was true that Elliot had long been something of a scapegrace. Even as a child, he had more or less always been into some scrape or another, causing minor scandals here and there with his irrepressible penchant for mischief. Kate had long suspected that he had inherited every bit of wickedness that had skipped his elder brothers, causing enough trouble for any three children on his own.

That penchant for roguishness had followed him straight out of childhood, and clung to him still. But despite it all, he was fun and kind, and in possession of a teasing smile and a flawless dimple which he had long learned to flash with a hapless shrug of his shoulders in such a manner that saw him swiftly forgiven for all manner of foibles.

Kate settled her chin in her palm. “So Devon has ordered you to marry?”

“Not as such,” Elliot grumbled as he extended his hand to her. “Help me up, Katie, there’s a damned boulder in my back.”

Kate grasped his warm hand in hers and helped him wrench himself upright into a seated position. “If you had not decided to nod off in the pasture—”

“It wasn’t a decision so much as an inevitability,” Elliot grunted as he yanked at his wrinkled coat. “Before you judge, Kate, perhaps you ought to try walking back home from the tavern six ales deep.”

“No, I thank you. And what has happened to your other boot?”

Elliot looked down at his stockinged foot and wiggled his toes, his brow furrowing in confusion. “I’ve no idea. But he made it known to society at large.”

Now it was Kate’s turn to be confused. “I beg your pardon?”

“Devon,” he said acidly. “He damned well made me into a sacrificial lamb upon the altar of marriage. Told anyone who would listen that I was seeking a wife. Might as well have put out an advertisement in the paper.” His head canted to one side as he cast his gaze upward reflectively. “Now that I think on it, he truly might’ve done,” he said. “At least I wouldn’t dare put it past him.”

Kate wouldn’t have, either. Devon had always had a shrewd, serious bent, and even if she hadn’t much been in his company in recent years owing to the fact that he was now the duke and had a great many more responsibilities than he had had when they had all been children together, she could easily imagine the discerning, calculating boy she had once known now as a man grown, systematically dismantling problems still more efficiently.

The present problem, of course, being his ne’er-do-well youngest brother.

“I suppose it was a kindness,” she said. “He might’ve cut you off entirely.”

“Oh, no,” Elliot said snidely, with a disdainful curl of his lip. “I would rather he had. I could get by just fine with only my inheritance, you know. Perhaps I’d have to economize a bit—”

“No more betting on horse races, then?”

“Haven’t done that in ages,” Elliot said as he brushed a few stray bits of grass from the fine wool of his coat. “I never was much good at it, besides. But I have got investments of my own, and the means to live comfortably even if Devon had decided to snip the financial strings he might otherwise pull. No,” he said caustically, “Devon decided to dangle me before the Ton like a choice cut of meat in a butcher’s window. I had anticipated a pleasant Season, and he made it into a nightmare from the very first event I attended.”

Fascinated, Kate tugged the end of her dark plait over her shoulder and worried the frayed bit of ribbon that bound it between her fingertips. “How so?”

“The mothers, Katie. The mothers!” Elliot threw up his hands in agitation. “Every mama with a marriageable daughter in London for the Season wasted no time at all in lobbing their precious little darlings straight at my head!”

Kate sniffed back a laugh and bit the inside of her lip in an effort to restrain her mirth. “Surely not directly at your head.”

“I assure you,” Elliot said severely, “had any of them had a trebuchet convenient to hand, I most likely would not have made it back here in one piece.”

“Pity,” Kate said, though she knew by Elliot’s deepening glower that she had not been entirely successful in disguising her amusement, “I have always enjoyed your stories of London. You’ve been gone little more than a week. Have you anything amusing to impart?”

“I think I’ve amused you quite enough already,” Elliot said as he rubbed at his neck and winced as if he’d put quite the crick in it. And probably he had, if he’d slept on the hard earth all night. “And that’s not the worst of it,” he said glumly as he climbed to his feet at last and extended his hand to help her to hers once more. “Devon tossed me out on my arse.”

“What?” Kate said, marveling. “From Longthorpe Manor?”

“Where else? He could hardly eject me from my lodgings in London.” Elliot raked a hand through his hair, which served only to bring more chaos to the already-disordered strands. “He’s determined that I should be leg-shackled, and he tried to send me straight back to London.” He flashed a cheeky grin and waggled his brows at her in that devil-may-care expression to which she had long been accustomed. “I went to the tavern instead.”

“And yet you walked back home? Knowing it would be barred against you?” With only one boot, even!

“Well, the tavern hadn’t any rooms available. Truth to tell, I thought I might at least find a bed of hay and a blanket in our stables—but the ale got the better of me halfway up the hill.” He gave a sheepish shrug.

“Not for the first time,” Kate chided.

“Besides,” Elliot added, having decided in his benevolence to ignore her taunt, “I knew you’d be along eventually, with the sheep. You always are.”

“The sheep have got to eat,” Kate said blandly as she collected her crook. “The lambs have got to frolic.”