Blushing, she tucked her breast back into her bodice and fumbled for her spectacles. “There’s no need to be cruel.”
“I’m not being cruel.” He pushed to his feet, brushing off his dirt- and grass-streaked breeches. “I just feel sorry for you, is all. I’ve been trying to break you out of that shell, teach you how to enjoy life. But now I can see you don’t want it. You’re going to die curled up in that hard, brittle cage you’ve constructed. I hope Sir Alisdair doesn’t mind cramped quarters.”
“So now I should apologize? For wanting something more than carnal ‘lessons’ on your charity? After all, that’s the best an awkward bluestocking like me could hope for. Is that it?” Minerva struggled to her feet. “At least Sir Alisdair would remember my name.”
“Perhaps.” He closed the distance between them, standing so near his chest grazed her br**sts. “But could he kiss you so hard, you forget it?”
For a hot, confusing moment, his breath mingled with hers.
But before she could think of any possible retort, he retreated. He picked up the trunk and shouldered it.
“Come along,” he said irritably. “By this time, we must be nearly there.”
“Nearly there? Nearly where?”
Minerva lagged behind him, trying to understand his irrational anger. And here common wisdom would argue that women were the sex with changeable moods.
They walked on for perhaps a quarter hour more, and then they emerged from the woods at the edge of a crest.
In the distance, down the slope, sat an immense stone manor house, bordered by gardens and outbuildings.
“Good heavens,” she breathed. “What is that place?”
“Winterset Grange,” he answered. “I knew we had to be close. A good friend of mine resides there. We need a place to stay the night. To lie low, in case those highwaymen are still sniffing about.”
“And we’re going to just appear on your friend’s doorstep? Uninvited, out of nowhere?” She waved a hand between them. “Looking as we do?”
“Oh, no one will blink. Guests are always coming and going from Winterset Grange. Whenever the duke’s in residence, it’s one never-ending bacchanal.”
Minerva stared at him. “The duke? We’re going to be guests of a duke?”
“He’s not a royal duke,” he said, as if this should be some comfort. “Hal’s an amiable fellow, you’ll see. He’s patron of a popular gambling circle called the Shilling Club. I’m a member. He’d never begrudge my lack of an invitation, so long as I show up with money to lose at his card table.”
“But you haven’t any money to lose at his card table. We have precisely one sovereign to our names.”
“Details, details.”
They started down the grassy slope. The vast, sprawling manor house seemed to inflate as they approached. As if some mischievous boy were behind the thing, huffing air into it like a scraped pig’s bladder. It was just grotesquely large, its windows deep-set and hooded, like leering eyes.
She didn’t like this. Not one bit.
As they neared the drive, Colin pulled her into the gardens, behind a windbreak of cypress trees. After dipping a handkerchief into a trickling fountain, he swabbed his face and neck clean, then retied his cravat. He brushed the dust from the front of his coat and gave a brisk, jaunty toss of his head that instantly tamed his hair.
So wretchedly unfair. Thirty seconds’ toilette, and he looked better than she could have managed with hot tongs, curling papers, and the assistance of two French lady’s maids.
“Am I presentable?” he asked.
“You’re every bit as unjustly handsome as always.”
He cocked his head and peered at her. “Now, what can we do about you?”
She snorted. What indeed. “Likely nothing, my lord,” she said acidly.
“Well, you can’t go in looking like that—all pinned and laced and buttoned up. Not if you’re meant to pass as my mistress.”
“Your . . .” She lowered her voice, as though the cypresses had ears. “Your mistress?”
“How else am I to explain your presence? I’ve been friends with the Duke of Halford for years. I can’t tell him you’re my sister. He knows very well I have none.” His hands went to the buttons of her traveling spencer. Beginning at the one nearest her throat, he slipped them loose, one by one. “First, we need to do away with this.” When he had the two sides divided, he pushed the garment from her shoulders and shook loose the sleeves. All the while, Minerva stood there numbly, not even knowing how to protest.
He folded her jacket and tossed it aside. “This won’t do either,” he grumbled, eyeing her shot-silk traveling gown. “You should have worn the red today.”
Minerva bristled. “What’s wrong with this gown?” She liked this gown. It was one of her best. The peacock blue suited her coloring, or so she’d been told.