Page 18 of A Lady Igniting Wicked Passions
“Begging your pardon for me language, my Lord,” he said, using a generic honorific to address the duke in the absence of knowing his proper rank. “But the little bleeders would rob you blind as soon as look at you. We have to be hard with them. You and your Lady won’t be troubled again.”
“Excuse me, Edgeworth. Do you think you could purchase for me a slice of cake?” Arabella said, smiling sweetly up at him.
He blinked at her then nodded. “Of course. It would be my pleasure.”
He left her and headed towards the lodge. As soon as he was out of sight, Arabella picked up her skirts and made for the rear of the building and the copse of trees that clustered thickly around it. She heard Helena loudly proclaiming her views on the birching of the poor, and the driving them out of places frequented by gentlefolk.
She shut out her sister’s cruelty and pushed her way between the branches of a large hydrangea. The little boy would not have stuck to the paths that wound through the copse but would have his own hiding places. She also doubted that he would have gone far. Not with those hollow cheeks and hunger haunted eyes.
“Little boy!” She whispered as loudly as she dared. “Do not be afraid. I will not hurt you. I want to get you something to eat. Please come out.”
She moved through the copse, wading through the undergrowth of fern and tall grass, peering around the boles of trees. The sound of someone coming through the undergrowth to her left drew her attention.
“Is that you, little boy? My name is Arabella. Please show yourself. I am your friend.”
Crouching, she looked under the drooping leaves of a large shrub whose name she did not know. It provided a perfect hiding place beneath its glossy, leaf-covered branches.
But no small boy cowered there. She straightened, looking around and saw the Duke of Ashenwood step out of a bush directly in front of her. She gaped at him for a moment.
“What are you…” She began loudly. Then remembering where she was, she continued in a whisper, “…doing here?”
“I might ask you the same,” Ashenwood said, stepping towards her and tugging his coat free of the embrace of a woody-limbed rhododendron.
“I’m trying to find the boy who my sister was so cheerfully planning to have whipped, and removed from the Park,” Arabella replied.
“I excused myself before she got that far. She was telling some equally unpleasant ladies about how the poor should be rounded up and put into workhouses. I slipped away.”
Arabella’s heart leapt as the idea occurred to her that he might have slipped away to follow her. But then she saw the large brown paper bag in his hand. His eyes followed hers to the bag.
“I paid a fellow ten times what it was worth for his picnic and wanted to find the boy and give it to him. Silly, I know. But I could not bear to think of a child that young going hungry.”
Though she felt a pang of disappointment that he was not pursuing her, she could not help but smile at his compassion.
“I had the same thought. Edgeworth simply stared straight through the boy. I do not think he ever registered his existence. I sent him to buy my cheesecake, while I found the boy.”
“So we are about the same quest, it would seem?” Ashenwood asked.
“We are.”
“Then let us about it before our respective other halves notice our absence,” Ashenwood said with a broad smile.
Chapter 11
Aaron wondered if Arabella was angry with him. Their passionate tryst, on the occasion of the ball at Eversden, had been a week ago and he not spoken to her since they parted in her father’s wine cellar. Recalling that encounter, he remembered that it had been he who had kissed her. And then lifted her off her feet and taken liberties with her body.
At the time it had seemed that she was willing and even matched his passion. With the distance of time, he had wondered. So much so that the following morning he had left Eversden without a word to Arabella or Helena.
A short note to the Earl had explained that he had urgent business in London. On the road from Eversden to Ashenwood in the neighbouring county of Hertfordshire, he had regretted his impulsive choices.
To seduce the sister of the woman he had agreed to marry. To run away from both following that decision. Helena had written a sharply worded letter to him, expressing her dissatisfaction at his disappearance. He had finished barely half of it before consigning it to the flames, unwilling to indulge the woman’s narcissism.
Then, another sharply worded letter had arrived. This from a creditor, reminding him of his obligations. Obligations which Aaron did not have the money to cover. He had written back to Eversden, suggesting a visit to London and the presentation of himself and Helena as a happy couple to the Ton.
Eversden had practically bitten off Aaron’s hand. Arabella had been brought along with her intended. And Aaron fought a constant battle to keep his eyes from her.
“Your departure from the Abbey was sudden,” Arabella said, shifting some ferns to peer behind them.
“Urgent business…” Aaron began, then stopped. “The truth is, I had to get away from you before I transgressed further.”
