It Happened One Midnight (PG8) (17 page)

They crossed the little bridge over the river, and paused while they leaned over to peer into the water.

“I used to fish from this bridge when I was a boy. I seldom caught anything larger than my hand. My father brought all of us here—me, Miles, Lyon.”

“Are you close to your father?”

It ought to have been an easy question, or one he could have addressed with a pleasantry.

“My father is a difficult man,” he said instead, hesitantly. Not wanting to lie to her.

She didn’t press him. She heard a good deal in those simple words. “And your brother, Miles?”

“Lyon was the oldest, but we always used to turn to Miles for advice. He was always the steady one, whereas—”

“SHITE!”

He jumped and turned, to find Tommy was tearing the laces at the back of her dress. She whipped it over her head, standing in just a shift. She kicked out her legs like a Lippizaner stallion and—
one! two!
—her slippers flew past his head like satin missiles.

And before he could so much as fling out an arm or make a protesting sound, Tommy clambered over the bridge wall.

“
Son
of a—” He lunged at the rail.

In time to hear the splash.

All that remained were ripples of water fanning out from the place her body had sunk.

Everything stopped. His heart. Time. His breath.

And then she exploded to the surface, spluttering, bobbing, flailing, and she heaved her body awkwardly forward, her shift floating around her like foam, slim white arms churning the water, determinedly if gracelessly moving ahead.

Ahead of her, just out of reach of her hand, bobbed that bright scrap of ribbon and metal, carried inexorably away by the lazy current.

He was in the water now. He didn’t remember how he got there, or hurling off his own boots. Just the cold, the surrounding green.

He shot to the surface and lunged after her. He was an excellent swimmer, and he quickly overtook her, propelled by foul language and blistering fury.

“You bleeding
madwoman
. You belong in bleeding
Bedlam,
you bloody—”

He slung his arm around beneath her arms, pulled her into his body hard, and kicked off toward the bank.

“What are you—let me go! Let
go
of me, you
wretched
—”

He wasn’t to hear the end of that sentence, for she writhed and twisted in his arms, dragging them both beneath the surface. River water rushed up his nose, but he hauled them both upward again, spluttering.

She thrashed her arms and actually landed a blow on his ear.

He swore something scorchingly filthy.

She attempted to bite his hand.

That was when he clamped his arm like a punishing vise beneath her breasts, and pushed the two of them backward toward shore. He was stronger and she was small. It didn’t matter what she did, she hadn’t a prayer. She kicked and swore; like retrieved shipwreck cargo, he gracelessly dumped her on the narrow bank.

She pushed herself upright.

He ground out words through heaving breaths. “Move
one inch
back toward the water and I’ll wring your neck I swear to
God,
Tommy, don’t think I won’t.”

Her hands were balled into white knots. She tried to get to her knees and stumbled again, coughing and hacking. “
Damn . . .
you . . . to hell . . .”

The anguished fury in her voice froze his marrow. He nearly stammered.

“Tommy . . . what . . . tell me what’s . . .”

“It’s getting away!
Please . . .
Jonathan, oh
please
get it—”

And she pointed a shaking hand at that damned red scrap of ribbon.

And he threw himself back in the water. Fortunately, whatever it was had been enjoying a relatively languid drift up the river, despite their water battle. He was a strong swimmer and he kept it in his sight; it did a pas de deux with a passing floating twig, flirted with some leaves, and was just was about to shimmy between a pair of rocks when he seized it.

Treading water, he held it up high like a torch and waved it at her, amazed at how far away she seemed now. He saw her bring her hands together as if in prayer and drop her forehead down to them, then sink to her knees. From a distance, she looked entirely carved in marble—white arms, shift, toes—a martyred saint. Apart from her hair, that was, which she’d taken from its pins. It poured in a dark river down the front of her.

He pushed off the rock with his feet and began the journey back to her. And now he felt the distance in his arms and legs; the yards seemed to stretch longer and longer. It had been years since he’d had a swim in the Ouse, and he’d never done it in trousers and linen before. He waded to shore and stopped, his lungs heaving, water pouring from linen and nankeen and hair.

He stared at her.

With self-possession and pragmatism, while he’d been swimming back to her, she’d begun to set up camp of sorts. All the pins from her hair lay in a small gleaming pile. She’d peeled off her stockings and laid them out flat to dry, like freshly caught fish. She hadn’t removed a single particle of her wet clothing. It was plastered to her body, and he could see the petite outline of her, every curve of her thighs and legs, her slim arms.

He might have been more than intrigued in other circumstances. Instead, he longed to peel off the clinging linen of his shirt and hurl it at her.

He sank to his knees instead.

She looked at him hopefully. And then very likely alarmed by what she saw in his face, swiftly dropped her eyes and searched his hands. He’d kept the scrap of metal and ribbon tight in his fist.

Her lips were blue and gooseflesh marched up those slender arms. She really ought to take off every scrap of her clothing but he wasn’t about to suggest it, and there was nothing to wrap her in anyway. He could just imagine the reception that suggestion would receive.

“Rub your arms, like so, Tommy,” he said curtly. He demonstrated by chafing his own.

To hell with propriety. It was warm enough to dry them both, and he unbuttoned his shirt with stiff weary hands and shook it off his shoulders. He turned from her and hooked it to some shrubbery, quite conscious she was both staring at him and trying not to. Let her stare. He knew how finely he was built.

And then he looked down at the scrap of ribbon and metal in his hand.

It was, of all things, a Peninsular Medal. It was unmistakable. Struck in gold, with four short arms forming a cross. They were rare, and given only to men who’d commanded battalions.

He turned it over in his hand and read:

Thomas Cantor Moretyon

6th Duke of Greyfolk.

It made no sense.

Had she
stolen
it from the duke?

The silence while she waited for his reaction—and while he took in the information—was profound. Like a blow to the head.

“I’ve never seen any woman undress so quickly,” he said absently.

She didn’t look at him. “If that was a ploy to get me to ask ‘how many women have there
been?
’ well, you know how I feel about predictability.”

It was what she would have normally said, but her delivery was decidedly subdued. And wary. And well she should be.

His fury likely rose from him like steam. She could lay her stockings over
him
and they’d be dry in seconds.

“Fifty-six and a half,” he said shortly. Still absently. Glibness was a reflex for both of them, it seemed.

“I must be the half.”

At any other time he would have said, “Why don’t we make that a full fifty-seven now,” and they would have had a laugh at the utter unlikelihood of this.

But he was shocked by the purity of his anger. He pulled in fresh draughts of it with every breath. He couldn’t think through it, or piece together why she should be clutching a campaign medal with the Duke’s name on it, or why the loss of it should turn the formidable Tommy de Ballesteros into a trembling, beseeching child.

She cleared her throat.

“Thank you for retrieving my possession,” she said humbly and stiffly. Clearly “humble” didn’t come naturally to her. “May I have it now, please?”

“No,” he said instantly.

She turned her head swiftly toward him. Then just as swiftly turned away. She began plucking nervously at the wet shift to cover her knees.

He turned to her and said very slowly, “If you want it back, I’m going to need an explanation, Tommy. And please keep it truthful and simple or I’ll hurl this right back into the river.”

“You’re angry.” She hedged. “About . . . my sudden bridge dive?”

He fixed her with a scorching, incredulous glare.

“I
can
swim. I learned many years ago.”

“Oh. Well, then,” he said mildly. “That makes everything better. Did you have a lesson?”

“Well, yes, in a manner of speak—”

“Excellent. I suppose they simply forgot to tell you that you aren’t meant to suddenly leap over a ten-foot high bridge into a river and swim in a god
damned
DRESS?
”

Well. The last word dress cracked like an axe blow.

Birds burst from the shrubbery in alarm.

Dress . . . dress . . . dress. . .

That fury-infused sardonic word echoed in a very satisfying way all about them.

She was wide-eyed as a fawn and frozen in genuine alarm. He didn’t apologize. He inhaled deeply, released the breath slowly. He pressed his fingers to his temples. His voice was weary. “You could have
drowned
tangled up in your shift. Or . . . dashed your damned head on a rock. You had no idea of the depth of the water.”

“I had some idea.”

He turned and stared at her long enough for her to turn away and start picking at her shift again.

“It’s just that . . . Jonathan, the object you’re holding is very important to me.”

“Clearly.” He said it flatly.

“And what would
you
do if your dearest possession fell into the river?”

Her dearest possession? It had
sentimental
value, then. Not just monetary value.

“Well, let’s see. If I was a woman—a
sane
woman, mind you—I would have turned to the man standing next to me and asked for some assistance in retrieving it. If, on the other hand, I were a mad, willful, reckless, difficult, capricious, pig-headed woman, I would likely have torn off my clothes and thrown myself off a bridge with no warning whatsoever to my companion.”

She had gone increasingly pink and was now blotchy with infuriated color. But she was also clearly baffled by this recitation.

This did nothing for his temper.

“How
dare
you, Jonathan. That is . . . I . . . I . . . I wasn’t trying to be willful or capricious or reckless. I swear to you. I’m never any of those things.
Ever
.”

This seemed so patently delusional he didn’t address it.

“Then why the devil didn’t you point and say ‘Oh, no!’ when this went in the water? At which point I would have gone in after it, since I grew up swimming in this very river, or I would have done something clever and male to retrieve it, like fashion a fishing pole from a stick and a watch fob.”

She was watching his mouth move as if he was speaking a language she’d never before heard. Mother of
God
.

“I . . . I didn’t think to do that.” Her voice was frayed now. She was staring at him wonderingly. And then she straightened her spine and threw her shoulders back, realizing his temper was driving her like a nail into the ground. “I just . . .
it’s
just . . . all my life, if something needed to be done, Jonathan . . . well, then I have always simply done it. The medal was floating away and there was no time to discuss it, so it didn’t occur to me to chat about it. You see, I’m just not in the habit of . . . that is, there’s never been anyone who . . .”

She stopped abruptly. Clamped her mouth shut.

And now he was staring at her. She was pink and stammering, defensive, indignant. Her composure and confidence was warping, curling at the edges, as if he’d somehow just exposed her deepest shame.

Oh, God.

And silently he finished her sentence for her:
There’s never been anyone who cared
.

And here he was bellowing at Tommy as if
this
was a crime.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Jonathan, I swear it.”

He closed his eyes against her flushed face. He felt like . . . such an ass.

“I truly didn’t mean to upset you, Jonathan,” she said softly. There was entreaty in it. She sensed an easing in him, and she was going to work her advantage. “And I’m sorry that I did. Do you believe me?” Her hand lifted slightly, as though she meant to soothe him; he stared at it. She dropped it again.

She wasn’t his sister Violet, for whom he suspected he would die without question (and knowing Violet, he still wasn’t certain it wouldn’t one day come to that), but who had gone about threatening to throw herself down wells and the like before she married the earl, knowing someone on the periphery, a brother of some sort, would always save her from herself. She was now the Earl of Ardmay’s concern. And he was possibly the only man on the planet who could handle her.

Yet how on earth could he have known this about Tommy? He was about to learn more about her, and he wasn’t certain whether he wanted to, and yet everything in him rebelled at the idea of her hurling herself off a bridge because no one else had ever pulled her back by her metaphorical elbows. A conviction settled over him.

He inhaled deeply, and sighed out a breath.

“From now on, you will take three seconds to assess whether whatever it is you’re about to do is dangerous. If the answer is ‘yes,’ I want you to tell me, and if it absolutely must be done, I will do it instead. You can trust me to do it. Do we have a bargain?”

He expected mutiny.

She studied him, her expression cool, assessing, now.

“Very well,” she agreed softly, regally, as if giving him a gift.