Dangerous to Kiss (27 page)

Deborah’s stint as a teacher at Miss Hare’s school had taught her a thing or two about adolescent girls. She knew exactly what was going on. Meg, quite deliberately, had arranged to meet with one of her beaux when she knew the gentlemen in her own party would not be there to prevent it.

She peered out the window but could not make out the gentleman’s identity. “Who is he, do you know?”

Rosamund shook her head. “All I know is he isn’t someone her brothers would want her to meet, otherwise he would have approached her quite openly.”

“Millicent Dench,” said Deborah, remembering the bane of her existence at Miss Hare’s, and she ground her teeth together. “I should have expected something like this. At least Meg had the good sense to take a groom with her.” Which was more than Millicent had done.

The words were hardly out of her mouth, when the groom wheeled his horse and came cantering back in
their direction. Under Deborah’s horrified gaze, Meg and her beau disappeared behind a stand of evergreens.

“Oh dear,” said Rosamund. “She has sent the groom back. Now there is no one to chaperon them.”

“I’m going after them,” Deborah said. Ignoring Rosamund’s plea to wait until the gentlemen returned, she flung open the carriage door and was soon mounted. When the remaining groom made to go with her, she ordered him to stay with Miss Banks, then she took off in a flash of thundering hooves.

She could ride. Rosamund, who considered herself no mean equestrienne, admiringly watched girl and mount streak across the sward.

The horse was spirited, but Deborah controlled it effortlessly. As she passed the groom, he called out something which Deborah could not make out. Then he, too, dug in his heels and went racing after her.

She plunged off the turf and into an area of woodland. Leaves were thick upon the ground but the bridle path was still clear. She checked her mount’s pace and took a moment to get her bearings. There was no sign of Meg or her companion. To her left, there was what appeared to be an old ruined lodge. Ahead of her was the path, and all around, the silence of dense evergreens. She pulled on the reins and her mount left the path and made for the ruined lodge. The groom, coming upon the bridle path a moment later, went galloping by without looking to left or right.

“No one ever kissed me like that before.” Meg touched her trembling fingers to her lips.

Stephen Montague, Viscount Leathe, smiled slowly. “And you’ve had plenty of kisses, I suppose?”

“Not as many as you, if rumor is anything to go by.” Unsmiling, she pulled out of his arms and wandered aimlessly around the stone ruins, all that remained of this ancient hunting lodge that had once belonged to kings.

“Rumor is right,” he said, watching her closely. “I never pretended I was a monk.”

She turned her head in his direction. “Do I detect a sneer behind those words?” When he didn’t answer, she laughed without humor. “I must be mad, meeting you here like this. There’s going to be the devil to pay when I go back to the others. If only you would try to get along with my brothers! If only you would make an effort to establish yourself as a respectable gentleman!”

The sneer was more pronounced. “I thought I had when I asked you to marry me. What could be more respectable than that?”

She looked at him helplessly. She knew it wasn’t wise to love him. He was everything her brothers said and more. They didn’t know the half of it, but she knew because Stephen had told her, not confiding in her, but laughing it off as a huge joke. He wasn’t like her. He hadn’t been raised in a family where love and discipline were inextricably bound up together. He had known discipline, a ferocious discipline, and he had rebelled against it. He wasn’t as bad as Gray said. But he wasn’t good either.

“You told me,” he said, “that you would give me your answer today. What is it to be, Meg? Do we elope, or do we part forever?”

He sounded flippant, as though her answer hardly mattered to him, and that angered her. Her lips compressed, but she managed to keep a firm grip on her temper. “I can’t elope with you, Stephen. You must see that. And really, there’s no need for it. If you would only do as I ask, in time, my family will come round.”

“Your family?” His lip curled derisively. “What the hell have they got that makes them so proud? If they can’t accept me as I am, then to hell with them, to hell with you.”

She was Lady Margaret Grayson, the daughter of an earl, and no one, not even Leathe, who was the son of an earl, was permitted to speak to her like this. She spoke passionately. “I’m proud of my family, Stephen, proud of my brothers. I could not marry a man who would make me ashamed to be his wife.”

There was a long, tense pause and she could see his shoulders stiffen. He said softly, “Then it appears we have both had a lucky escape.”

“Lady Margaret! You will mount up at once and return to the carriage.”

Deborah’s command brought both heads whipping round. She had slowed her horse to a walk, and as they watched, she reined in where one of the walls of the lodge had crumbled into rubble. Though she was still some distance from them, and the sun was in her eyes, she had a quick impression of a lovers’ quarrel. Meg seemed to be on the point of weeping.

Deborah softened her tone. “Come along, Meg. If we ride out of here together, no questions will be asked, or at least, none that we can’t brazen through. To delay is foolish. There is a groom following me and he is bound to carry tales to your brother.”

When Meg gave a little sob and stumbled toward her horse, Deborah allowed her eyes to stray to the stranger. He made no move to help Meg as she struggled to mount up.

“You must be the inestimable governess,” he taunted. “Miss Weyman, is it not?” He looked at her intently, and he said more naturally, “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?”

“Not to my knowledge.” The words were automatic. There was something familiar about him, something that worried at her. Shading her eyes with one hand, she began to edge her horse over the rubble, trying to get a clear view of him. “You have the advantage of me, sir,” she said. “I am sure Lady Margaret’s brothers will wish to know the name of the gentleman to whom they may apply for satisfaction.” This was an empty threat. Deborah did not believe in dueling, nor would she carry tales out of school. She was simply trying to bring home to the young man and to Meg the seriousness of their situation.

“Leathe,” he flung at her. “You may tell them Leathe.”

It was the last name she had expected to hear. The color in her cheeks receded, leaving her complexion
bone-white, and she dragged convulsively on the reins, making her mount rear up at the sudden pressure on its mouth. She controlled it with difficulty.

“Deborah, what is it?” cried Meg.

Leathe took a step forward, then another. When Deborah swayed in the saddle, he swiftly crossed to her and reached for the reins. This was the first clear view he had of the face beneath the plumed bonnet. “Deborah?” he said, frowning, and he turned her horse to face the sun. “My God, it is you!”

Green eyes gazed intently into green eyes and the silence stretched out endlessly.

“No!” cried Deborah suddenly, and she wrenched the reins from his grasp. Meg was forgotten in this greater peril to herself. She dug in her heels and her mare sprang forward.

“Deborah, wait!” Leathe was already springing into the saddle as he called out to her.

Instinct made her head for the carriage. She came out of the trees like an arrow shot from a bow. She could hear the thundering of hooves at her back, knew that her mare did not stand a chance against his powerful black stallion, but still she pressed on. He streaked by her and cut her off. Her mount reared and plunged to avoid him, and he deftly turned aside and plucked the reins from Deborah’s hands, bringing her horse to a standstill. He was an excellent horseman as she well knew. It was an accomplishment all the Montagues shared.

She put up a fight as he wrestled her from her mount, but her struggles hardly made an impression on him.

“Damn you, Deborah!” He had her by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “What’s got into you? Is this any way to greet me after all these years? Why didn’t you send word to me? I have gone through hell imagining what might have happened to you. I thought you were dead.”

“You betrayed me,” she cried out. “I trusted you and you betrayed me!”

“I never betrayed you! I swear it.”

“Liar! They were waiting for me! Father and the militia were waiting for me.”

“I know they were. I saw the whole thing. I don’t know how Father knew we were to meet there, but I swear it wasn’t my doing. And how could you believe such a thing of me? I hated our father. I still do.”

They were intent only on each other, oblivious of their surroundings. A shot from a pistol brought them to their senses. They looked around startled to see riders converging upon them. Nick was in the lead, waving a smoking pistol above his head, and his expression was murderous.

Deborah looked pleadingly into her brother’s eyes. “Tell them nothing, do you understand?
Nothing!
I am Deborah Weyman, and you came to my rescue when my horse bolted.”

He nodded slowly. “I understand. But this isn’t the end of it. We must meet again and soon.”

There was no time to say more. Nick had flung himself from his horse and was within earshot, and in the next moment, they were surrounded by a group of bristling, furious gentlemen who all seemed intent on calling Leathe out. The viscount, to everyone’s surprise, refused to be provoked, and though he remained aloof, he supported Deborah’s story of her horse bolting. Short of calling her a liar, everyone had to accept what she said, but they did so reluctantly.

Meg said nothing, but her eyes were rife with suspicion, and she stared hard at Leathe when he kissed Deborah’s fingers. He did not acknowledge her when he rode off.

The story had to be gone through again for Gray’s benefit when he came home later that evening. He questioned Deborah in his library, and by this time he had several versions of what happened. The contradictions hardly bothered him. He had a fair idea of the truth. It seemed to him that Meg and Leathe had made an assignation which Deborah had foiled. The part about the
bolting horse was an obvious pretext to prevent a duel, for if she or Meg had accused Leathe of insulting them, a duel would have been unavoidable. Women would lie through their teeth to prevent men dueling.

There were, however, two points which nagged at him. The first was Meg’s pettishness. Though she had substantiated Deborah’s story, she had hinted that Leathe and Deborah knew each other and seemed to be on the best of terms. Gray did not see how this was possible. Deborah was closely guarded, and if she had met Leathe, he would have been told about it, unless, like Meg, she had met the viscount in secret. This Gray would not believe of Deborah. The second point that made him wonder was Leathe’s conduct when Nick ordered him to take his hands off Deborah. The viscount was all sweetness and light, according to Nick, and could not be needled into offering the challenge which Nick would have accepted on the spot.

“Your horse bolted,” said Gray, idly watching the play of candlelight on Deborah’s face. “Now that surprises me. I know you to be an exceptional horsewoman.”

“Thank you,” said Deborah and pressed her lips together. She had already made up her mind that the less said the better.

Gray smiled, recognizing the ploy. “What really happened, Deborah? Did you say something to Leathe that made him come after you when you caught him with Meg? I believe the fellow has a vile temper.”

He must know that her story was a tissue of lies from beginning to end, but she had to stick to it for all their sakes. She moistened her lips. “As I already told you, Meg and I went riding and met the viscount quite by chance. His black stallion nipped my mare and she bolted. That’s all there is to it. I knew nothing of his vile temper. He was perfectly charming. Ask Nick. Ask anyone.”

There was an interval of silence as he digested this. Finally, he said, “It has been suggested to me that this was not your first encounter with Leathe, that you and he are on terms of intimacy.”