Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 03] (8 page)

Susan smiled. “You are right, I suppose.”

“I am. Just because you turn tail whenever anyone looks slantwise at you does not mean that everyone else does.”

“Do I do that?”

“You do.”

Susan bit her lower lip. “I don’t mean to, but I do not like loud voices, and I cannot bear to make people angry. And you—Well, you do become so very …”

Daintry chuckled and, getting to her feet, moved to hug Susan. “I do, don’t I? Threw my first temper tantrum before I was three, got my own way, and never looked back.”

Susan shuddered. “Which just goes to show how different things were for you than for me. The one time I told Mama that I
would
do something she had told me I could not do, she snatched me up across her lap and beat me with her hairbrush till I screamed. That was not the only time, either, I can tell you.”

Daintry grimaced. “She never did such a thing after Aunt Ophelia came to live with us, did she?”

“Not like that.” Susan sighed. “But I never stopped being afraid she might. With you, it was so different. Even Papa—”

“Oh, come now,” Daintry said, chuckling, “you are not going to say Papa never punished me, for you know perfectly well—”

“Oh, I know he did, but he never seemed to become so angry with you as he did with me—or with Charles, for that matter.”

Daintry shrugged. “I suppose it was because you both were older. He expected more from you than from me. And, too, when I was small, I was nearly always with Aunt Ophelia if I was not with my governess. Aunt would not permit Mama to strike me, and even Papa respects her wishes. And as for Charles, I can understand anyone’s wanting to smack him. I do myself, quite frequently, and I utterly
feel
for Davina, though I do not think she ought to flirt with other men the way she does.”

“No,” Susan said, “and speaking of other men—”

“Yes, I know,” Daintry said, picking up her whip from among the clutter on her dressing table. “Not that it wouldn’t do that man a world of good to have to wait a few moments. He has become entirely too accustomed to telling others what to do. If I am going to marry him, that must certainly change.”

“You do like him then,” Susan said, getting up to follow her when she moved to the door.

Daintry looked back over her shoulder. “Like him? Pooh, he is just a man like any other, though not so bad as I’d feared he might be,” she added, remembering a singularly attractive smile, warm golden hazel eyes, and the bemused way he had looked up at her that first moment after entering the hall.

“He is very large,” Susan said as they walked along the corridor together toward the stair hall.

Daintry remembered his asking if she was disappointed to find him taller than his uncle. She had nearly given her most private thoughts away then. How could one be disappointed when a man’s figure was precisely the same as that possessed by the hero of every romantic novel one had ever read? For regardless of the general disapproval of such reading material at Tuscombe Park, no one had ever forbidden her to read what she liked, and she did enjoy reading a pleasant Gothic romance from time to time.

Realizing that Susan was waiting for a response, she said, “I suppose he is rather large, and he is much too arrogant and overbearing in his manner to suit me. I can tell you, I did not care for the way he took it upon himself to remove my cloak, or the way he invited himself along on our ride, either.”

“I should not care to see him angry,” Susan said quietly.

“Oh, pooh. Much I should care for that.” They had reached the gallery, and peering over the railing, she saw that the two little girls were waiting—one patiently, the other pacing. “Oh, good, the girls are there.” Glancing toward the drawing-room door, she added, “If Penthorpe thinks I shall fetch him, or wait while he procrastinates, he has another think coming.”

She had started down the stairs before she realized that Susan was no longer with her but had in fact vanished in the disconcerting way she had perfected as a child. Then the sound of the drawing-room door caught her attention, and she turned, sighing at the sight of the large man coming out of the room.

“I hope you were not trying to sneak away,” he said.

“At least you did not bring Papa along to insist that I let you accompany us on a nice, sedate ride toward the moor, sir. I promised the children I’d take them to ride on the shingle to see the smugglers’ caves, and I do not break my promises.”

“None of them?” He was beside her now on the stair, his hand firmly at her elbow. She could feel its warmth through the material of her sleeve, and though she did not require assistance to get down the stairs, she decided it would be unseemly to pull away. Few of her friends in the neighborhood treated her at all protectively, although, in London, gentlemen frequently offered such assistance—generally with a great deal of pomp and flourish that she found most disagreeable. To Penthorpe’s credit, he managed the gesture so neatly and naturally that she found, to her own surprise, that she rather liked it

“There you are, Aunt Daintry,” Charley exclaimed. “We thought you were never coming. It does not take me nearly so long as that to change a frock. Hello, Lord Penthorpe. Are you really going to ride with us, sir?”

“I am—part of the way, at least—and I promise I shall not try to talk you into riding toward the moor.”

“Oh, good,” she said, laughing. “Not that I was afraid you would, of course, for Aunt Daintry promised, but I did fear that Grandpapa might insist, and then, of course, we should have had to obey. Not that Melissa would mind. She likes riding on the moor. But today,” she added, turning and giving Melissa a nudge toward the front door, “we are going to ride on the shingle and see the caves. Will you come that far with us, sir?”

Daintry stiffened but, determined to avoid outright rudeness in front of the children, managed to hold her tongue.

His smile was extremely attractive. “Not today, I think,” he said, then added to Daintry in a lower voice, “I did not speak merely to foist my company upon you, you know, but to keep your estimable parent from forbidding your outing altogether.”

She said in the same tone, as the children vanished through the doorway, “I am not ungrateful, sir, and will certainly acquit you of any other motive. My father would not have forbidden the ride, but he might well have insisted that we ride to the moor, and the girls would have been disappointed.”

“Where will you ride, exactly?”

“St. Merryn Bay. There are several caves there reputed to be used by smugglers, though I daresay the men are as likely to have been wreckers as free traders, when all is said and done.”

“I know those caves from my childhood,” he said, frowning. “The path down from the cliff is extremely steep, is it not?”

Feeling her temper rise at the implied criticism, she kept her tone even with difficulty. “Both girls are excellent riders, sir. Charley could ride down that trail blindfolded and sitting backwards, and although Melissa is a more nervous horsewoman, she will not have any trouble, I assure you.”

“Nevertheless, I think now that perhaps I’d better accompany you,” he said. “That path will be slippery from the drizzle, and even though you will certainly take your groom, you will be glad of more help than his, I think.”

“That is hardly your decision to make,” she said, annoyed.

He was silent until she looked up at him, and there was an enigmatic look in his eyes when she did, but it vanished, and he said sternly, “Our betrothal gives me the right to make it.”

She bit her lip, then said, “You go too fast, sir, if you think to give me orders upon such short acquaintance.”

“Do you deny my right? I heard you say you had given your word to honor this betrothal, or is your word worth no more than that of most females?”

Indignation threatened to overcome her. “I do not break my word once I have given it, but if you think to run roughshod over me, my lord, you had better think again. I will make you wish you had never been born if you try it.”

He smiled. “Shall we catch up with our charges before they ride off without us?”

She gritted her teeth but made no objection. The girls were already mounted, Charley on Victor, her favorite bay gelding, and Melissa on a pretty little gray mare. Daintry’s wiry groom held the reins of the silver-dun gelding she favored, and of a large black-roan stallion with a white blaze between his eyes.

“Oh, what a beauty,” she said, moving to stroke the black’s silky muzzle. “So tall and powerful, yet so dashing and alert.”

“My horses have to be large to carry my weight,” he said. “That is Shadow. But come, my dear, your charges grow restless.”

She felt his hands at her waist before she realized his intent, and there was a brief, exhilarating sense of weightlessness before she was deposited on her saddle.

Handing her the reins, he said, “Do your leathers require some adjustment?”

“No, thank you. Clemons knows just how I like them.” She watched as he swung effortlessly into his own saddle, and she was amused to see that, despite the presence of the groom following at a discreet distance, he kept an alert eye not only on the two little girls as they rode down the drive but on herself as well.

She was proud of the children. Both had light hands on the reins and excellent, firm seats in the saddle. She saw at once that Charley was impatient to gallop, so she said gently, “We will walk the horses for fifteen minutes, my dears, but then you may have a gallop if the road is not too mushy from the rain.”

Her escort looked at her with raised eyebrows but made no comment. Sighing, she said, “I suppose you think they ought to be riding with leading reins, Penthorpe.”

“Not at all,” he replied, smiling back at her in a way that made her look swiftly ahead at the gravel drive. “I might, however, have waited a bit before tendering hope of a gallop. The roads are bound to be in too dismal a state for one.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed, “but if I had told them as much, Charley would be so anxious to prove me wrong that she would communicate her anxiety to her horse. This way she will be content to ride quietly and will soon recognize, for Melissa’s sake if not her own, the foolhardiness of riding too fast on a slippery road.”

Though he looked doubtful, he said nothing more for several minutes, and indeed, appeared to be listening with some amusement to the one-sided conversation going on ahead of them. As usual, Charley was doing all the talking, while Melissa listened and nodded. After a time, he turned to her again and said, “Though I would not dare to suggest leading reins, I own I did think they would still be riding ponies at their ages.”

Daintry, not surprised that he would hold such an opinion, said, “You and Sir Geoffrey agree on that head, sir. Melissa has a pony at home, but she rarely rides him, and I think that a very good thing, myself, but it is plain to see that you have never taught a child to ride. Ponies are dreadfully unreliable, you see. Their gaits are uneven, and they are much more liable than horses are to bolt across a road without reason, or to stand and kick, or to rear up just for their own amusement. And since they are so quick on their feet, their antics can confuse a child so that even if she does not fall off she loses her self-possession, and becomes quite terrified.”

He was silent again, and for a moment she thought he meant to argue the point, but then he nodded and said, “I had not thought about that, but I believe you may be quite right.”

“Well, I am, of course, though you needn’t sound so insufferably condescending about it. However, at least you admit it. My father still thinks girls ought not to ride at all until they are sixteen. He says they are not strong enough to control a mount of any sort before that time, and I daresay he doubts their ability even then. Boys, of course, he thinks able to ride as soon as they can walk. I am persuaded that he must have put Charles on his first pony even before that auspicious occasion.”

“If your papa disapproves so strongly, how is it that he allowed you all to learn before you turned sixteen?”

“Oh, that is because of Aunt Ophelia. She believes girls are every bit as capable as boys are. Indeed, she believes that females are the superior sex, that it is only because men are more muscular that they have become dominant.” She watched to see how he would respond to that provocative suggestion.

He laughed. “Lady Ophelia is one very redoubtable woman.”

“She has been called worse things than that,” Daintry said.

“I don’t doubt it. She terrifies me.”

“A perfectly common reaction,” she said, smiling sweetly at him. “I mean to be exactly like her.”

“Do you, indeed?” The warm smile was still visible in his eyes, and while she could not accuse him of mocking her, she had the notion that he was humoring her. As they continued to talk, she was conscious of a strong wish to know what he really thought of her, or of anything at all, but he was careful to advance no exact opinions of his own, and she could not quite decide whether she admired his verbal dexterity or despised his evasive nature. Before she could make up her mind, they had come to the path leading down to the shingle from the cliff side.

The Channel was not looking its best. Sky and water were much the same shade of gray, and the waves were edged with lacy white foam. They had been able to hear the roar of the rollers long before they could see them, and the breeze had quickened to a light wind, blowing Daintry’s curls about and making her glad that the brass pin held her hat tightly in place. Melissa’s hat was still in place, too, but Charley had long since removed hers, and her long black curls blew wildly about her face. Her cheeks were rosy, and her dark eyes sparkled.

“Look,” she cried, “we can see Melissa’s house way yonder on the headland, and here’s the path down! I’ll go first.”

“Oh, no, you won’t,” Daintry said. “I will.”

Her companion shook his head. “The best plan would be for the heaviest horse to lead the way,” he said quietly. “Shadow is very sure-footed, and if Charley follows me, Melissa can follow her, and you can bring up the rear with your groom. That way, the pair of you will be in the best position to judge the safety of our course,” he added when she opened her mouth to protest.