Page 24 of The Remarkable Myth of a Nameless Lady
But the Duke had humiliated her father in front of those whose opinion mattered most to him. Was there a chance that in retaliation he would arrange an ‘accident’ to befall the sodden Duke?
She thought of the way her father had struck her last night. The way he had grabbed her arm. Her father was not a gentle man.
“Let us get you home,” she said finally, thoroughly resigned to the task. “But we must hurry.”
The problem, once the matter was decided, was to convince the Duke to go with her. He was sitting in the gathering dusk, morose and silent, not paying any attention to her at all. In exasperation she looked around, hoping that he had ridden up here. A horse might have been easier. She could have perhaps convinced him to mount.
The shards of glass told her a different story. He had carried the decanter with him. Obviously, he had walked. She circled him warily. To touch a Duke was wildly inappropriate. To be here was inappropriate. Manners, it seemed, were a thing to be dispensed with out of necessity.
“A good servant would take care of his Duke, I suppose,” she muttered somewhat facetiously. “So be it.” With that, she put her hand upon his arm and shook him a little. “I need you to come with me.”
He never so much as looked at her. “Why?” he answered, his voice barely audible. “That I might play at being Lord and Master of the great estate and make an utter fool of myself? The very fact that I invited my men here has proven to me that I know nothing of what I am doing. An entire house party without planning? I can only imagine the work it must put you to.”
“I have little to compare it with,” she reminded him, taking a firm grasp on his good hand and pulling until he came to his feet. “I am new here.”
“I am likewise…as you put it…new here.” He staggered a little and looked around. “I seem to be walking. Am I walking?”
“Indeed, Your Grace, you are walking. You are taking a fine evening stroll with the great Lady Alicia Price, late of Ballyroyal Estate.” She gave a half curtsey, as she drew him down the path, still holding her hand.
Her foot trod on something that crackled underfoot. That paper! For a moment she hesitated and bent to retrieve it, only to hear a horse somewhere nearby.
Her father!
Alicia’s entire body went cold. For a moment she was frozen before dashing into action, pulling the Duke behind some trees, pressing him into the brush with her hand over his mouth to silence him when he protested.
No more than a minute later a well-lathered horse came into the clearing, prancing and snorting, moving sideways on the path as it came past where they hid. Her father cursed every bit as eloquently as the Duke had earlier, but with earthier reference, as he looked about the clearing.
“Alicia, gal, where be ye?”
Alicia held her breath, feeling the warmth of the Duke beside her, feeling his hand upon her shoulder steadying her. Her hand fell away from his mouth, her fingertips still tingling from the impression of his lips upon them. Her entire body coursed with a subtle awareness of the man beside her as she waited for her father to give up and go home.
Robert Price dismounted and stomped around the clearing, pausing at the wall. Had his sharp eyes noted the broken glass decanter? Surely he smelled the spilled whiskey, or had the smell already dissipated? He turned to go, his eyes falling on the same paper she’d stepped on only moments before. He cursed again as he bent to retrieve it.
Let him be satisfied. Let him see that it is what he wanted and then go.
Someone must have heard her silent prayer for her father unfolded the paper and glanced at it before tucking it in his waistcoat pocket. “Alicia?” he called the name again once before mounting. His expression was dour, unhappy that he had been disobeyed. For a moment she thought of leaving the Duke there, under the trees and running forward, to let her father known she had not disobeyed him after all.
“Stay. It is better this way.”
The Duke whispered the words in her ear, his hand still holding hers, warm and sure and strong in the darkness. She nodded, waiting him out.
Robert turned the horse in a slow circle, as though trying to find her in the shadows of the forest. Once he faced them, staring so long she wondered if he could see her through the branches after all, though she was fairly positive he could not. Finally, he gave the horse a savage kick, sending it back down the road at a gallop that risked both their necks.
Alicia let out a breath she did not realize she was holding. “He is gone,” she said, somewhat unnecessarily.
“I think it is safe to let go of my hand.”
It took her a moment to realize two very important things. First, that she was still clutching the Duke in way that was most unseemly. And second, that he seemed far more sober now than he had been moments ago. With a muffled cry she let go his fingers. “Your Grace! I beg your pardon…”
“’Tis a funny thing how danger will clear a man’s head,” he said as though it were the most natural thing to come crawling out of the bushes next to a ruined castle in the dead of night. “I daresay I am more myself than I was, though still drunk enough to wonder whether it would be wise or not to kiss the Lady of Ballyroyal.”
She flushed. “You shall kiss no one at all, but rather get yourself back to the manor before you are discovered to be drunk and acting in the most disorderly fashion. You will create a scandal appearing as you are.”
“As you will, if you are found in my company. I shall be fine, I should think, but I would be more easy of mind if you were to walk with me at least as far as the road. I dislike these woods greatly and would not leave a lady here alone.” He gestured toward the path that wound back toward the main road.
“I wish you would forget I said that,” she murmured, rather vexed with herself for having spoken so incautiously. “I am a servant in your house, nothing more.”
“There is much more to you than being a servant,” he replied, falling into step beside her. “And I think I should like to hear the story of how it comes to be that a Lady serves within my household.”
