“A post chaise!” she said.
“Did you think I’d buy a ticket for a mail coach?” he said. “At this hour?”
“Will it take us to Twickenham?” she said.
Ripley folded his arms, tipped his head to one side, and gazed at her. In the murky afternoon light, his eyes had darkened to the green of a cedar forest.
Olympia straightened her spectacles and put up her chin. “I’ve decided you made a telling point.”
His green eyes narrowed.
“About going back with my tail between my legs,” she said. “I am not a coward.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said. “Undecided, possibly.”
“I admit I was not thinking clearly,” she said. “All the same, one might make a case for heeding one’s instincts. I should like to speak to Aunt Delia before I return—if I return. I believe she’s the one best equipped to counsel me. Everybody else sees nothing but the headline, Olympia, Married At Last, To A Duke. I will tell you frankly the headline hung in my mind, too, to the detriment of clear thinking.” She looked away.
So much had clouded her thinking. Her brothers’ future. Her own.
Ashmont, too. Nobody had ever courted her so ardently. In fact, nobody had ever courted her at all, unless one counted Lord Mends’s talking endlessly about his books. When Ashmont directed that earnest blue gaze at one, as though he saw nobody else in the world, and intensified the effect by casually mentioning his grandfather’s vast collection of books, which she knew could easily compare with those of the Dukes of Roxburghe and Marlborough—well, it was impossible to keep a cool head.
As was not the case with Lord Mends, Olympia had seen for herself the duke’s library at his place in Nottinghamshire. Her father had taken her with him to look at some horses. Ashmont had been away at school at the time. It was his uncle and guardian, Lord Frederick Beckingham, who’d kindly offered little Olympia—she couldn’t have been more than twelve—a tour of the house. Once she’d seen the library, she wasn’t interested in the rest of the house, much to the gentlemen’s amusement.
“Twickenham,” Ripley said, bringing her back to the present.
“Yes,” she said.
He was silent for an exceedingly long time. She clenched her hands—not that she had a prayer of winning any fight with him—but as a signal she was prepared to fight, though she knew she’d been more than a little wayward.
She’d better not drink brandy, ever again.
“Very well,” he said. “Get in the carriage.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding and started toward the vehicle.
The postilion had put down the step and opened the door when a yelp of pain, then another, echoed through the courtyard.
Turning toward the sound, Olympia saw, near the yard’s entrance, a wiry, red-faced man raise his whip at a cowering dog, a fine, brindled wolfhound or something like.
A red mist appeared before her eyes.
She forgot about Ripley. She forgot about Twickenham. She was moving before she thought about moving, marching briskly toward the scene, speaking as she bore down on her prey, her finger pointing at him, then down at the ground. “You. Drop it. Now.”
The villain froze. The dog sank onto its belly.
For a moment Ripley froze, too, dumbfounded.
“Now,” said her ladyship. She was moving toward the whip-wielding fellow, not running, but moving swiftly and inexorably, like—like Ripley didn’t know what. Something inexorable, as implacable as Fate. Which was absurd. She, in a hat with flowers springing up from the top, and a black lace cape fluttering about her shoulders, and ribbons streaming as she sailed along. A pastry confection, perhaps. Nemesis, hardly.
Yet every man in the courtyard paused at the tone of her voice. All of them, Ripley included, responded to that sound. It was simply the Voice of Command, though he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard a woman employ it so effectively. His sister, perhaps. Or Aunt Julia.
Though the object of her displeasure looked as obstinate and belligerent as every other undersized blackleg and bully Ripley had ever known, and seemed to be drunk as well, the fellow brought his arm down. Otherwise, he didn’t move, only stood, warily watching her ladyship’s approach.
“I’ll take that,” she said. She held out her slender gloved hand.
“Meantersay,” the brute began.
Lady Olympia didn’t move, didn’t utter a syllable, only stood with her hand out, waiting.
He gave her the whip.
Ripley would have let out a whoop, but instinct told him this was a delicate balance. Matters could turn dangerous in an instant. As Ripley moved nearer, as unobtrusively as was possible for a six-foot-plus man in fighting trim, the man spoke, and a cloud of alcoholic fumes floated outward.
“Meantersay, that’s my dog, plague take him,” he said. “And he cost me a bloody fortune, the miserable cur. Obedient, they said. Trained for—for hunting. Right. All my eye and Betty Martin.”
“You struck a dumb animal,” she said. “With a whip. How would you like it?” She raised the whip as though to strike.
The fellow put up a defensive arm. “Hoy! I wasn’t—” He swayed and started to stumble, but righted himself at the last minute.
“I am painfully tempted to give you a taste,” she said. “To help you remember, the next time. But that would be ill-bred.”
She looked at the dog. “Come,” she said.
The dog rose.
“The devil!” the fellow said. “You can’t—that’s my dog!”
She made a slight beckoning gesture and the dog went to her.
“Sam!” his owner shouted. “You come here, or I’ll—”
“You won’t,” said Lady Olympia. “You don’t deserve to own a dog.”
“You’re not taking my dog! I’ll have the law on you!” He looked about him. “Somebody fetch a constable. That’s my dog, and when the stubborn cur don’t do what I say, I teach him. Nobody else’s bloody business.”
The dog beater was shouting about robbers and interferers and constables and who knew what else. People emerged from the ground floor coffee room. Spectators spilled out onto the gallery overlooking the inn yard.
“Ahem,” Ripley said.
Headed for the post chaise, canine at her side, Lady Olympia paused and looked up at him, surprised. “Oh,” she said. “There you are.”
“We’re not taking the dog,” he said.
“We can’t leave him with that unspeakable person,” she said. “Striking a dumb animal! With a whip! And it wasn’t a light warning tap, or striking the ground to get the animal’s attention. He made the dog cry out—you heard him—and this is a lurcher. They’re stupendously quiet dogs.”
Ripley could see what it was. A poacher’s dog. A silent hunter. It stood close to her, by her hand, the one holding the whip. The animal trembled.
“They’re stealing my dog!” the dog beater shouted. “Somebody stop them!”
“Don’t be a bloody fool, Bullard,” somebody called out. “It’s His Grace of Ripley. A duke, you half-wit. He can do what he likes.”