The Taming of the Duke

Page 49

Well, she wasn't.
Imogen grabbed her riding crop and headed out the door, followed by a mumbled farewell from Josie.
Rafe was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, tapping his crop against his boots. He looked up as she came down and smiled that rueful smile of his. Imogen felt a rush of pleasure. He might not have the deliciousness of his brother, but Rafe was quite wonderful, in his own way. Especially now he wasn't drinking.
So she tucked her arm into his and smiled up at him.
"When you look at me like that," Rafe said, grinning back, "I know you want something. What is it?"
"Will you come with me over there?" She waved her hand.
"Over there?"
"Over… to Draven's house. Maitland House."
Rafe stopped and looked down at her, those beautiful shadowed eyes of his looking straight into her soul. "Are you sure you wish to?"
"Quite sure," she said, her voice coming out absolutely steady. The previous night had given her courage. Cheered her from the dreary grief of the past year. "I know that Lady Clarice would want her jewelry sent to various relatives," she said. "She only left the briefest of wills, you know, because she was so weak toward the end. She asked me to give things to the women of her family, and I have been sadly remiss in waiting a year."
Rafe touched her cheek for a moment. "She was lucky to have you as a daughter-in-law."
Imogen's smile wavered. "She wanted Miss Pythian-Adams to marry Draven because she would have kept Draven from the racetrack. I didn't succeed at that."
"It's not that you couldn't have, Imogen. You never chose to, did you?"
Her eyes searched his dark gray ones. "I should have."
"He was a man, and he lived as he wished to live. If I
hadn't wished to quit drinking, Imogen, you couldn't have nagged me to it. Though you might have driven me mad in the trying."
She smiled a little at that, and they kept walking.
Posy and Rafe's horse were tied up in the yard, nuzzling each other.
"They're the best of friends," Rafe told her. "I'm too heavy for Posy, but I had her taken out every day while you were in Scotland. And meanwhile, she and Hades had stalls next to each other."
"Come here, you beauty," Imogen said. Posy nickered and strained toward her and then she was cupping her dear, heavy nose in her hands and laughing as Posy blew whiskery, grass-smelling breath in her face.
"Up you go," Rafe said.
His hands came around her waist from behind and he threw her up on the horse. It was odd how similar he was to his brother. Imogen felt as if she knew those large hands from the night before, when Gabriel pulled her from the wine barrel as easily as if she weighed no more than a feather.
"What are you smiling at?" Rafe asked, as they began walking down the road leading to the west.
"A random thought," Imogen said. "So do you think that I should sell the manor? It does no good sitting there, after all."
"Would you ever wish to live there?"
"No."
"Are you absolutely sure?"
"Without question," Imogen said. "Look at that field, Rafe. Isn't it beautiful?"
"Dandelions," Rafe said. "Lots of thistle. I should have had it mown." It was pleasant to know that he would never neglect decisions of that nature again.
"Look at all those daisies. They're cornflower blue. We haven't any daisies like that in Scotland." .
"They aren't daisies. That's chicory; some people eat it."
"We must stop and look more closely on the way home. I want to bring a bouquet to Josie."
"In that case, we'd better make haste. Chicory is an intelligent plant. It closes at midday, and doesn't open at all if it's raining."
"How on earth do you know these things?" Imogen asked, looking sideways at him.
"I love the country," he said simply. "There have been many years when I never bothered to go to London for the season."
"Who taught you that chicory closes at midday?"
"An old man named Henry lives in the hut down next to the willows," he said, pointing. "We've spent many an afternoon together."
"An unusual acquaintance for a duke," Imogen observed.
"Not for a pickled duke, as you used to say of me."
"You drank together?"
Just the faintest shade of reserve in her voice made him tumble into a defense of Henry. "Not that. But I'd be too restless to stay indoors… thinking of the drink, you see." He grimaced at her ruefully. "I'm afraid that one does tend to think of it most of the day."
"And now?" she asked curiously.
"I still do. But it feels completely different: as if it were losing its grip on me. I shan't go back to that."
Imogen stared at Rafe. He had the same dusting of black stubble that he always had by noon, but the skin of his cheeks was pink and healthy, and his eyes didn't have that half-awake, hooded look that he used to have. He shook back a fall of chestnut brown hair, smiling up at the blue sky.
No wonder Gillian wanted him. He was a beautiful man, even with those little lines around his eyes.
He looked over his shoulder and smiled at her lazily.
Imogen's heart was beating quickly, though why she couldn't explain.
"Would you like to race?" he asked. "I'll give you a lead."
As much to get away from her thoughts—almost sinful it felt, to think of Rafe that way—she didn't even answer, just pressed her knees against Posy's sides. She leaped forward with such a great spring that Imogen's clever little hat flew away before Posy's front hooves even touched the ground.
She bent low and shouted encouragement, feeling the wind whip her hair into a frenzy. They were going so fast that Rafe couldn't catch up, but he was, he was… Imogen gripped her knees harder and urged Posy on, and then Posy showed that great heart for racing that she always had. She switched into that other pace she had, the one where she almost floated above the ground; or that's how it felt.
Then Imogen knew that Rafe had no chance of winning. "Oh you beauty, you beauty," she crooned to Posy, and signaled her to the right, into the great driveway leading to Maitland House. Posy pulled a beautiful turn, gravel spraying out from her heels but never losing her stride. And then Imogen saw the great curved gates of the house appearing and she began easing up.
She'd won; she'd won fair and square.
If Rafe was only a whisker behind her, it was still the kind of whisker that costs a man a golden cup given out by a royal duke.
A second later Rafe raced past with a laugh, and they ended up tumbling through the open gates of Maitland House, Imogen with no bonnet, and Rafe whooping like one of those wild men of deepest Africa in the London circus.
Imogen leaned over Posy's neck, gasping. Rafe had already leaped off his horse. To her considerable annoyance, he wasn't even out of breath. In fact, she couldn't help noticing the way his old shirt pulled free of his trousers as he leaped. What happened to that gut that used to hang over his trousers? Could it have disappeared in a mere few weeks? Because now that body looked as lean and hard as his brother's… even more so, perhaps. After all, Rafe always rode, every morning. Whereas scholars, one would have to think, sat at a table…