Page 52 of Bride By Mistake
“Of course not.”
“Dress-ups in the convent? And the nuns told you that you looked just like a boy?”
“No, it wasn’t a game. There were times when—” She broke off. “Reverend Mother sometimes allowed me to go outside the convent dressed this way, among ordinary people. They all took me for a boy.”
He didn’t believe her. “Why would Reverend Mother allow you to take such a foolish risk? Besides, she was scandalized when she saw you in those breeches yesterday.”
“Because she saw your face when you saw the breeches.”
Luke had no doubt of it. She probably saw the raw lust he’d felt, too. “You say you’ve had these breeches for years. When did you last wear them?”
She frowned. “Three or four years ago. But they still fit perfectly well.”
He snorted. “A lot tighter, I’ll wager.”
She bridled. “Are you saying I’m fat?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m saying you looknothing like a boy.”
“I don’t agree. The girls in the convent were forever telling me I looked like a boy.I barely have breasts.”She gestured, but he refused to even glance down.
He was not going to be drawn into a discussion of her breasts.He knew for a fact she had them; he could see their gentle curves even beneath the leather jerkin. Her stupid school friends were blind.
She continued, “The fact is—”
“The fact is, youwillfullydisobeyed me, you looknothinglike a boy in that attire, and I couldeasilyhave been a bandit!” Why the devil was he explaining it to her? He never explained himself in the army. He gave orders and people obeyed.
Menobeyed.
“But I haven’t seen a soul,” she assured him blithely. “And when I thought you were a bandit, I hid—quite successfully, you have to admit. You wouldn’t have known I was here if I hadn’t called out to you.”
“I saw you from above,” Luke grated.
“Yes, and I heard you crashing through the underbrush from miles away. So—”
“If Ihadbeen a bandit, and your horse had snorted or made a sound? What then, eh?”
“If you’d threatened me, I would have shot you,” she said calmly.
“What?”
“Shot you. With this.” She reached behind her and pulled out a pistol concealed in the waistband of her breeches. He recognized it from eight years before.
“Is it loaded?”
“Of course! What use is an unloaded pistol?”
He glared at her, still seething, trying to ignore the sight of her in those breeches, the way the soft buckskin clung to her shape. “What if I’d been two bandits—or more? Bandits ride in bands, you know.” He’d lost ground and he knew it. One should never argue with a woman. One should simply order. Or demand. He tried to retrieve his authority. “How dare you run off and leave me!”
“I didn’t leave you,” she said indignantly. “I merely parted from you temporarily. I promised faithfully to join you in England as soon as I’d found my sister. Didn’t you get my letter?”
“That’s not the point.”
“No, the point is my sister is in the hands of a vile bully. Would you leave Molly to the mercy of a man like my cousin Ramón?”
He wouldn’t, of course, but he was not going to be distracted. He returned to the issue in question. “You left without my permission.”
“But when I asked, you refused, so what else was I todo?”
