The Duke's Tattoo: A Regency Romance of Love and Revenge, Though Not in That Order (34 page)

“I don’t see why I have to marry some decrepit old aristocrat,” she picked up where she’d left off. “I’d rather marry someone who can do, er, useful things.” She couldn’t pull her eyes from his body moving, swinging and striking with a mastery that heated her fair skin from head to toe.

“I doubt very much you mean that.” (Thunk!) “And stop saying Lord Clun is decrepit.” (Thunk!) “For all you know, he’s a man chock full of practical skills.” (Thunk!)

She harrumphed. Her henchman cum woodsman had the cultivated speech of a gentleman. Yet, he spoke in a deep voice sweetened with the dark honey of Welsh. He subtly rolled and caressed the hard r’s and tr’s of English. Each time he rumbled ‘Lo
Rr
d’ Clun, she shivered. She could listen to him all day.

He glanced at her over his shoulder, “It’s hard not to conclude that Lord Clun has the poorer part of the bargain!”

“Is that so?”

“What practical skills do you offer, my lady?” (Thunk!) “Needlepoint-pillow making? Flower arranging? Menu selecting? Singing?” (Thunk!) Clun snorted as he struck another log apart with a solid blow.

“I can’t carry a note,” she chuckled. “But I have managed an earl’s household for years. I can cook, bake and hunt game among numerous other useful accomplishments.”

“Is that so?”

“Is that so hard to believe? Oh, never mind, there’s enough to heat our meal.”

She got up, strode over to him and touched his back low at his waist so he stilled. She could warm her hands on the heat he gave off. And the scent of the man! Fresh air, leather and muscular male effort with a top note of horse, she sighed, just as a practical gentleman ought to smell. She plucked up half a dozen good-sized pieces of wood and carried her armload away without trouble. She, too, was capable. This, she wanted him to know for some inexplicable reason. As soon as she stepped clear, he began swinging the axe with vehemence.

A little while later, she returned and sat once again behind Clun to watch his body twist, heave and move as he split wood. Now, she noticed dreamily, the damp shirt lay pasted to his sculpted body, across his broad shoulders and down his wide back…narrowing to his waist. Below were his trim hips and hard buttocks, like a sculpture of a Roman athlete. Or Hercules. Oh, she thought, here is a man. He was overpoweringly male. She found herself enthralled by the interplay of his muscle, sinew and bone.

Then he opened his mouth and ruined everything.

“Yes indeed, I pity the baron.” (Thunk!) “Even a doddering old man deserves some peace and consideration in his dotage.” (Thunk!) “You will undoubtedly drive him to an early grave.”

“I will not!”

“Oh no?” (Thunk!)

“I’ll spare him the fatal vexation of me entirely because I shan’t marry him.”

Clun stopped chopping and leaned an elbow on the axe handle. “Though you’re well intentioned, somehow I can’t imagine he’ll escape his fate. For I wager your father is anxious to be rid of you.”

“You’re probably right,” she chuckled. “But you’re cruel to point it out, sir. I vow I won’t go home to the earl unless he ends this farce of a betrothal and promises not to attempt such a travesty again on my behalf. He thinks what I need is a strong hand to guide me! He regrets, he’s often told me, having been lax with me. Lax! His parenting never involved indulgence, just benign neglect. And having let me do as I wish for two decades, it seems a mean trick to impose discipline on me now through marriage to a relic.”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps! Who’s to say the poor, old baron is up to the task of disciplining me! You say I’ll give him fatal spasms. How could such a man hope to bring me to heel? No. If I must marry, I would liefer marry a strong, practical man.”

“A woodsman perhaps?” Clun mocked. “Wouldn’t you miss your comforts? Hot water magically appearing in your room for your bath and disappearing again just as magically when you’re through and it’s gone tepid.”

“I am content to bathe in the stream and do so frequently.” She was only too happy to leave him dumbfounded, or scandalized, or whatever it was that left his eyes bulging and his firm, kissable lips loose as a carp’s.

Served him right, she sniffed.

• • •

Clun could only stare agape at her in the autumn twilight. His mouth went dry. She flippantly mentioned bathing in the nearby stream and he blanked for an instant. First, came to mind his recollection as a young man of taking a brief dip. His frozen balls had retracted far into his lower body somewhere and refused to descend for a day. Next flashed a series of heated, pleasantly stirring imaginings: the glowing colors of her creamy skin touched with blushes all over, her long chestnut hair fanning out around her siren’s face, her rosy nipples gathered into tight little buds in the chill water. He forcibly recalled himself to his senses. Much as he feared, her proximity, the wood chopping and the bathing-siren fantasy she incited tweaked his manhood to attention. He took up a large log and held it before him.

To distract her, he teased: “You would have me believe you’ll bathe in a frigid stream and kill your own meat through the winter?”

“I’m a dead aim with a gun. The venison in the stew, that’s mine.”

“You mean Lord Clun’s.”

“Well, if you want to be a stickler. But I shot it.”

“I’m impressed.” And he was impressed. She was nothing if not surprising. And dangerously stimulating.

“I just realized we’ve not been introduced. I am Lady Elizabeth Chapin Damogan.” She pronounced her last name with care, slightly exaggerating the second syllable, ‘da-MUG-en.’ “Those who have only read the name mistakenly say ‘DAM-o-gan,’ which I cannot abide.”

“And you’re too polite to correct their pronunciation? I’m astonished.” Of course, he knew her blasted name. He was about to marry the chit! Should he instruct her to pronounce de Sayre
⁵
in some ridiculous way, perhaps ‘dee SAY’ or funnier still ‘de-SIRE’?

“I’m William Tyler…That’s all, just Tyler.” He bowed elegantly to cover his hesitation. Clun wasn’t sure what his intentions were at that moment, only that he wished to have a bit of fun with Lady Elizabeth ‘da-MUG-en.’

The Baron’s Betrothal,

Book Two in the Horsemen of the Apocalypse series,

may be available winter of 2012/3, we’ll just see.

(Click on the number or hit “Back” to return to your place in the text.)

¹
A stone, for U.S. readers like me who always wonder, equals 14 lbs. At 14 stone. Thus, Attila weighed 196 lbs, or the size of a large male bull mastiff, if only Attila were a purebreed.

²
Bath’s public assembly rooms on Bennett Street east of the Circus were known as the “Upper Rooms” by residents to distinguish the newer, larger ballroom, Tea Room, Octagon Room and Card Room from the older assembly rooms — the “Lower Rooms” — south of the new location on Terrace Walk near the South Parade along the Avon River.

³
In 1811, a Lady of Distinction published
The Mirror of Graces
in which she writes, “we shall next speak of the
stays
, or
corsets
. They must be light and flexible, yielding to the shape, while they support it.” (pg. 78) Since a Lady of Distinction makes none between the terms stays and corsets in the period, this author chooses not to as well. A divorce is a triangular, padded ‘breastplate’ placed between the breasts to separate them, as described on pg. 101, in the same book.

⁴
Algernon was typical of the large, muscular gray horses bred from Percherons and Arabians. Not so large as a pure Percheron, still Algernon favored his Percheron sire, and stood at 18 hands, a strapping, huge horse. He was, in other words, in perfect proportion to his monumentally muscular master, Lord Clun. No doubt descended from destriers, Algernon was the finest, strongest war horse on the field of battle, at least, as far as Lord Clun was concerned.

⁵
De Sayre, pronounced “de-SAY-er.”