Page 3 of A Lady Igniting Wicked Passions
“You may, Lord Harlton. It is the Marquess of Edgeworth.”
Harlton was equally adept at hiding his true feelings as Arabella was. His smile deepened and he nodded. But Arabella knew him well enough to recognize the twitch of his right eyebrow, the slight tremor at the corner of his mouth.
“Well, I do indeed, I believe. An excellent fellow. I will see to the tea.”
Harlton excused himself and hurried from the room. Arabella smiled for all she was worth though her heart was breaking. For herself and her closest friend.
Chapter 2
Aaron moved his head at the last moment. The razor-sharp rapier pierced the air inches from his right ear. His own blade whipped up to knock aside that of his assailant. Dancing across the uneven, weed infested paving of the courtyard, Aaron countered the attack with darting, dashing lunges of his own.
His ash blond hair was dark with sweat, and it rolled from his angular cheeks to the corner of his tightly drawn mouth. A muscle in his chiselled jaw pulsed. It was the only visible sign of the strain he felt. The rest of his lean, athletic body moved with supple grace, like a dancer.
His opponent was bald, with black eyebrows above coal-like eyes. A scar dragged the corner of one eye down, ending just below his jawline. While Aaron was handsome, even with the sweat of exertion soaking him, the man he attacked was plain-faced and ugly, made devilish by the gruesome scar.
His leather boot caught on the upraised corner of a stone slab and stumbled. Aaron roared a victory cry and lunged. But the man simply dropped backward, lifting one foot to punch at Aaron’s chest even as he threw his blade aside and seized the front of Aaron’s shirt in both hands.
One moment he was being pulled close, his lunging sword knocked aside. The next Aaron found himself sailing through the air. He turned before hitting the paving stones, rolling on his shoulder, and scrambling to his feet.
The gleaming point of his opponent’s sword met him, hovering an inch from his left eye.
“A twitch. That is all that it would take,” the man said. “Do you yield?”
Aaron was breathing hard. He grinned, eyes never leaving those of Lord Graham Loudon, Marquess of Blakehill.
“I can see your devious mind working, nephew. Searching for a way out where there is clearly none. You are beaten. Surrender.”
Blakehill grinned, the smile giving him the appearance of a brigand. Aaron barked a sudden laugh.
“I yield, Uncle. You win. But I almost had you, admit it.”
The sword was sheathed and a broad hand reached down for Aaron’s. Blakehill hauled his nephew, the Duke of Ashenwood, to his feet.
“You did. Had you not lost your head and begun celebrating your victory before it had actually happened, you would have had me,” Blakehill said.
He produced a handkerchief and mopped at his bald head. Aaron rubbed sweat from his face with the sleeve of his shirt.
“And either victory or else a grave,” Aaron quoted with a mischievous smile.
“You were a man, take you for all in all. I shall not see your like again. Nor ever when you fight like that,” Blakehill replied, putting a heavy arm about Aaron’s shoulder with the camaraderie of old comrades.
“Then I am eternally grateful that the war is behind us, and my recklessness shall not tempt fate any longer,” Aaron replied.
“I shall take a thousand recreational deaths at the point of your sword, safe in the knowledge that the French no longer care to shoot at me, or any Englishman. Come. It is a hot day and these ancient stones reflect the sun something terrible. I have Porter beer in a cool drawing room with slabs of ham and cheese.”
He scooped up his own blade, which had fallen from his hand when he’d been sent hurtling over his uncle’s head, at the finale of their regular duel. Blakehill followed, moving with the same dangerous grace as the younger man.
It was the grace of men accustomed to wearing a blade on their hip and wielding it with lethal skill, though both were more accustomed to the heft of a cavalry sabre than a rapier. Around them rose the black stones of Ashenwood Castle.
The courtyard in which they had carried out their deadly exercise was crumbling, the oldest part of a glowering, antique home. Beyond its ramshackle eastern wall was an expanse of long-waving grass, trees, and then a sudden, precipitous fall, down to the lower levels of that part of Hertfordshire.
Fingers of smoke rose lazily from the chimneys of the nearby town of Holywell, curling upward until they surpassed the heights of Willbury Hill, with its ancient stone circle and less ancient castle turned stately home.
Stepping through a narrow door set into a stone arch, Aaron led the way along a stone passageway, hung with dusty and moldering tapestries.
“I cannot believe the neglect you show to some of your father’s collection,” Blakehill said in the tone of one going over old ground.
“I cannot believe you and my father place so much importance on such objects. They are dreary like most of this old pile. I care not to invest finite financial resources into the restoration of bits of cloth,” Aaron said.
