Beyond Compare (4 page)

“That is exactly what I mean. You embarrassed the man in front of some of the very people he would most like to impress. Now it will be doubly hard to placate him. And I imagine our guests were none too pleased about it, either.”

“Mother says you cannot waver on what you think is right just because it isn’t a popular opinion,” Alex put in pedantically.

Kyria let out a low groan. “I’m sure she did. But she isn’t the one trying to keep a large number of guests happy and bring Olivia’s wedding off.” She glanced around. “Now, where are your ponies? We’re going home, and you can explain to Aunt Hermione why your parrot escaped from its cage—”

“No!” the boys cried out in unison, alarmed.

“Is Wellie all right?” Alex asked in concern.

“Yes, of course he’s all right. Nothing could harm that wretched creature,” Kyria said dryly. “But he flew all over the house and created an enormous flap, and then he snatched the wig off your great-aunt’s head and shredded it.”

The boys gaped at her.

“Did he really?” Con asked in an awestruck voice, and Alex giggled.

“Oh, yes, very funny, I’m sure,” Kyria told him, adding, “I doubt it will be quite as amusing when you have to face our great-aunt.”

“No,” Alex agreed. “But at least she just gives one a tongue-lashing and a few smacks with that cane, and I’d rather have that than a lecture from Papa. He looks at me in that way, and I know I’ve disappointed him.”

Rafe glanced at Kyria, a half smile playing on his lips, and Kyria could not help but remember the moment when she had fallen into his arms and felt them wrap like iron around her. His body had been hard against hers, his heat surrounding her. She could remember, too, the way her own body had tingled in response. Thinking of the moment, she colored and turned her face away, unable to meet Rafe’s gaze.

As the twins turned to Rafe, babbling their thanks, he held up a hand, saying, “Well, it was your sister here who risked life and limb to try to capture him, not
to mention standing up for you with that tutor and the squire. So I reckon she’s the one you ought to be thanking.”

“We do!” Con assured him, and caught Kyria in a hug.

“You are the absolute best!” Alex agreed, wrapping his arms around her from the other side.

Kyria chuckled, planting a kiss on the head of each of her brothers. “Well, I’m glad you realize that,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I am going to plead your case with Mother. You two are on your own there.”

“But she’s the one who told us we have to stand up for what we believe in,” Con declared. “She can’t get too mad, can she?”

“I don’t think she intended for you to stand up for your beliefs by sneaking away from your studies and lying in wait for the squire. Nor will she like that your tutor quit.”

“Old Thorny?” Alex exclaimed. “You’re joking! He scarpered?”

Con jumped up in the air, letting out a cry of joy. “Thank heavens! He was the worst tutor we ever had.”

“No,” Alex disagreed. “Spindleshanks was the worst.”

“He was the meanest,” Con conceded. “But he wasn’t as boring as Old Thorny. All Mr. Thorndike has us do is copy Latin grammars and such, and it’s deadly dull.”

“That may be, but you two run through teachers faster than I do hairpins,” Kyria pointed out, but she could not help but smile down at her two scapegrace brothers.

She was inordinately fond of them and resented any disparaging remarks anyone made about them. There were times when their tendency to get into trouble was
exasperating, but she knew that whatever fuss was kicked up, Con and Alex had never gone into it with bad intentions. They were simply lively and intelligent boys whose curiosity and intrepidity sometimes led them onto paths that other children would not have taken. In Kyria’s opinion, that fact indicated something lacking in the other children, not in Con and Alex.

They had reached the trees where the boys had tied their ponies, and after some discussion, they wound up with Kyria riding Alex’s pony and the two boys doubling up on Con’s—though both of them expressed preference for riding on Rafe’s stallion. Rafe cupped his hands to give Kyria a leg up onto the pony’s back. Then he mounted, and they started off.

Kyria glanced over at Rafe. She remembered the way it had felt riding with him on his horse, and a little shiver ran through her. She could not help but feel a tiny pang of regret that she was not riding back the same way, and the thought shocked her a little.

She was not the sort of woman to swoon over a man. She had never joined her friends in giggling and whispering about this man’s broad shoulders or that one’s fine eyes. There were men she acknowledged as being very handsome and others who were charming or intelligent—though rarely did she find all three. But though she might be aware of their good looks, they roused little excitement in her breast. She had realized long ago that she was simply not the sort of woman to be swept away by any man.

Her friends had long told her that she was entirely too prone to thinking and not enough to feeling, and the epithet given her by the eligible bachelors of London society—The Goddess—reflected not only her classic beauty but also her faintly aloof air. That she
had gone for years without falling in love with any of the eligible men who sought her hand had cost her an ache or two. She would have liked to know the sort of love her parents obviously enjoyed. But, she reminded herself, it was just as well. Aside from a few notable exceptions, husbands were, in her estimation, dictatorial and overprotective, and marriage was a very unequal proposition. In her opinion a woman gave up her freedom, as well as her name, when she married. She had long ago resolved never to marry, and the years she had spent in society since her coming out had only confirmed that decision.

She cast another glance at Rafe, who was ambling alongside their ponies, his head bent to listen to the twins’ chatter. He was, she thought with some irritation, precisely the sort of man over whom most women swooned. Kyria had little doubt that when she introduced him to the other guests at their house, all the women would be jockeying to talk to him. The carelessly tousled hair…the broad shoulders…the sky-blue eyes…the devastating smile…Kyria could well imagine how the ladies would be all atwitter about him.

He was a charmer, the sort of man who was interested in conquest. He would smile and flatter and woo one, hoping to add another lady to his collection. Kyria had been out for nine years now, and she was well acquainted with his type. She was also quite practiced at eluding such a man’s advances. She set her mouth firmly. Mr. McIntyre would soon find out that she was one woman who would not fall into his clutches—well, figuratively speaking, she reminded herself, her lips twitching as her irrepressible humor rose, reminding her that literally speaking, that was precisely what she had already done.

The journey back to the house was slower than the ride out had been, and as they rode, the twins chattered away, demanding a recounting in detail of their parrot’s flight, pondering the possible punishments that would be meted out to them for their escapade and pausing to pepper Rafe with questions about his horse, his gun, his accent and whatever else came to their agile minds.

Kyria would have stepped in to hush their questioning, but she quickly saw that Rafe was more than able to hold his own with the twins, answering some of their questions, deflecting others and turning the tables on them with questions of his own.

She was a little surprised, for she had found over the years as one of the reigning beauties of London society that most of her suitors were apt to wilt under an interrogation from the twins. Despite her father’s high rank, hers was not a family given to formalities. Unlike other families of the nobility, where children were sequestered in a nursery and rarely ate with the family, interacting with their parents only at prescribed hours, in the Moreland household, the younger siblings were apt to be in and out of their elders’ company at all hours during the day and usually took their meals with them, unless the duke and duchess were having one of their rare formal dinners.

Visitors to their home often found the twins’ presence disconcerting, and one future earl who had been assiduously courting Kyria even went so far as to tell Kyria that he found the boys impertinent and could only wonder at the laxity with which they were raised. Kyria had responded by suggesting that he would be happier, then, if he no longer called on her.

But Mr. McIntyre seemed to have no such qualms in dealing with the boys. He talked and laughed with them
in his slow, slurry way. He looked, she thought, to be accustomed to boys.

When she said as much a few minutes later, he turned that slow smile on her and said, “Oh, I’m afraid you’ll find that I don’t have much trouble talking to just about anybody. Whether that’s a good trait or one that will drive you crazy just depends on you.” He glanced over at Con and Alex and added, “I guess I wasn’t much different from them—I had a tendency to get in trouble myself at that age.”

“And has that changed?” Kyria asked, a little surprised at the teasing note in her voice. If she wasn’t careful, she thought, the man would assume she was flirting with him—
which she absolutely was not.

Rafe’s smile broadened and he winked at her. “Well, now, I reckon a lot of people would say that I still manage to get in some trouble.”

There was something about his voice, slow and rich like warm, golden honey, that stirred something inside her. She glanced away quickly, and it was a relief when Alex distracted Rafe’s attention by asking another question.

When they got back to the great, solemn pile of gray stone that was Broughton Park, they were told by the footman who opened the door that the Moreland family was waiting for them in the formal drawing room. Alex and Con slipped off to run up the back stairs to the nursery, murmuring in suddenly quiet voices that they had best see if their parrot had survived his adventure unharmed.

Kyria and Rafe started up the grand front staircase, but as they climbed a man and woman appeared at the top of the stairs, smiling down at them.

“Kyria! Rafe!” The woman started down the stairs,
followed by her companion. She was a small woman with large, expressive, brown eyes and deep brown hair, and her face was wreathed in smiles. She was dressed in a reddish brown velvet gown, and the paisley shawl flung around her shoulders had fallen from one arm, so that it floated out behind her as she walked. She was Kyria’s sister Olivia, whose nuptials were to take place in two days.

“Smeggars told us what happened!” she went on worriedly as she reached them. “Are you all right? Thank you, dear.” This last remark was addressed to Stephen St. Leger, who had picked up the trailing end of her shawl and tucked it solicitously around her shoulders.

“Yes, of course,” Kyria assured her automatically. She had spent her childhood tagging along after her older brothers and sister, and she had grown accustomed long ago to downplaying any danger to herself. “I am sure Smeggars exaggerated.”

“Rafe! I was beginning to wonder if you were going to come,” Olivia’s fiancé said, reaching out to shake his friend’s hand. “I expected you days ago. I thought perhaps you’d decided to put down roots in Ireland.”

“I got delayed purchasing a horse,” Rafe explained, taking his friend’s hand. “I have no timetables on this trip. I am completely committed to operating on my whims.”

“I am well aware of how you operate,” Stephen retorted, and the four of them continued up the stairs.

The formal drawing room was filled with Kyria and Olivia’s large, rather noisy family, and when they first stepped into the room, it seemed a blur of noise and people to Rafe. Then a tall, statuesque woman stepped forward, assuming easy command of the situation.

“How do you do?” she said, smiling and extending her hand to Rafe. “You must be Mr. McIntyre. We have heard how you rescued my daughter this afternoon, for which I am very thankful.”

“Ma’am.” Rafe bowed over the duchess’s hand. He had only to look at this woman, he thought, to see what Kyria would look like in thirty years. The Duchess of Broughton was as tall as her daughter, with equally red hair, save for a strand or two of white woven through it, and much of her former beauty still showed in the strong bones of her face.

“Yes, good show,” a man said, coming up beside the duchess and reaching out to shake Rafe’s hand. “Duke of Broughton. Pleased to meet you. Uncle Bellard speaks highly of you.”

“Thank you, sir. I think very highly of him, too.” Rafe had met the duke’s uncle two months earlier, when he and the scholarly old gentleman had helped Stephen and Olivia find the source of several bizarre incidents that had plagued Stephen’s ancestral home, Blackhope Hall.

“He wants very much to see you,” the duke went on, “but you know Uncle Bellard—he doesn’t much like these large gatherings.”

Rafe could well imagine that the diminutive scholar, a very shy and bookish man, did not feel at ease in a crowd.

Broughton cast a distracted glance around the room and gave a small sigh. “Can’t say as I much like them, either.”

“I know, Papa.” Kyria linked her arm affectionately through her father’s. “You would much rather be outside in your workshop.”

The duke smiled a little, getting a distant look in his
eye. “Got a new shipment of potsherds today. You must come down and see them, Kyria. You, too, um…”

“Mr. McIntyre, Papa,” Kyria put in.