“Use me like a crutch,” she said. “It’s all right. I’m not fragile. Quite strong, in fact, thanks to dragging library steps about and hauling books up and down—and some of them as heavy as a cow, thanks to the gilt.”
She was stronger than he would have thought, in more ways than one. All the same, he hated making a crutch of her. He did it, though. No choice: one hop forward at a time on his left leg, with her as support for the right. Even so, he couldn’t keep the right foot fully clear of the ground, and every time it made contact, pain vibrated from his ankle.
But the common sense part of his brain told him that if he tried to get back to the carriage on his own, on this uneven ground, he’d land on his face. And end up crawling. He doubted it was much more fun to crawl with a throbbing foot as to walk.
And so, wrapped tightly together, they inched along the uneven ground. As they moved, her breast pressed against his arm and her hip against his upper thigh. The attendant sensations traveled easily to his groin, distracting him from the pain and thoughts like, Now what do we do?
Only another five miles or so to the house, he told himself. It wasn’t going to be the most pleasurable experience, jolting along the rough country road of the last stretch, but he’d survive.
And then?
He’d think about and thens when the time came.
At long last, they reached the road, and he dared to look up from the ground ahead he needed to cover.
The lurcher stood in the chaise’s open door.
“Woof!” he said.
Olympia caught the look in the dog’s eye in the nick of time.
As Cato vaulted from the carriage, she hauled Ripley out of the way.
The dog failed, by a very narrow margin, to bowl them over. One would have thought he’d be fatigued after his chase. Instead he was excited and apparently quite proud of himself.
“Sit,” Olympia ordered, and the dog sat, tail thumping.
“Where on earth did I get the idea you were well trained?” she said.
“Woof!”
“And silent?”
“Woof!”
She looked up at Ripley, whose face seemed paler than before.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “But I saw in his eyes the urge to pounce on a human, and I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t you he chose to greet overenthusiastically.”
“I saw it, too, the trickster, acting so meek and mild before,” he said.
“I don’t doubt he behaved so well before because he was cowed and shocked,” she said. “But he’s a dog, and seems to have forgotten. That tells me Bullard didn’t have him for long. He’d be much more timid otherwise.”
“Instead, he’s reverted to his natural, obnoxiously exuberant personality,” Ripley said.
After they’d contemplated the cheerfully innocent-looking Cato for a moment, he said, “You’re tougher than you look.”
“All those tomes, as I told you,” she said.
She summoned the postilion. Pale and stammering, he apologized. He’d let his attention wander, as Ripley had said, and reacted too late as a consequence.
To his credit, the duke accepted the apology without berating the fellow further. It wasn’t the postilion’s fault, certainly, that Cato had decided to go hunting.
Then Olympia focused everybody’s attention on getting her injured companion into the carriage. The process was awkward—a post chaise wasn’t the roomiest vehicle—and it took a while to get him settled.
She doubted the result was very comfortable. He had to sit sideways, wedged into a corner. Propped up on the linen parcels, his injured foot rested awkwardly upon her knee.
“Your knee is going to ache after half a mile,” he said.
“That’s nothing to what your ankle will feel like,” she said. “But we’ll go at an easy pace.”
“We’ll go like the devil,” he said. “The faster we get there, the better.”
“You’ll be screaming like a girl.”
“I’m not a child. A bruised foot will not have me puking and shrieking.”
“Grown men are worse than boys when it comes to pain,” she said. “And if that ankle’s as bad as I suspect—and we unequipped with strong spirits or even vinaigrette—”
“Vinaigrette! As though I were a swooning debutante!”
“Ah, there’s a picture,” she said. “The wicked Duke of Ripley swooning. But since I’ve nothing to revive you with, I must urge you to be brave. And if you must be sick—”
“As though I’d vomit on account of a few bruises.”
“If you must be sick, do it out of the window.”
Before the duke could retort, she told the postilion to keep the horses to a walk. She used the voice she normally employed when her brothers needed discipline. With Ripley, obviously, one must Dominate or Be Dominated.
The postilion appeared to listen to both of them, but he did not “spring ’em,” as His Grace demanded.
Her mind at ease on that count, Olympia concentrated on keeping Ripley distracted from the acute discomfort she knew he was hiding. He did it well, but she was watching, and she noticed the way his mouth tightened when they traveled over bumpier sections of the road.
After they’d covered about a mile, he shifted position, as though he meant to put his foot down.
“You’d better keep it upraised,” she said. “I realize it’s an awkward position.”
The seat held two people, with no room to spare, and his legs were long.
“It shouldn’t rest on your knee,” he said. “It’s too heavy.”
“I’ve layers of clothing to cushion my knee,” she said. “But you might feel more comfortable if we take the shoe off.”
“After the foot’s been in a rabbit hole, in a farmer’s wet field?”
“I have six brothers,” she said. “My stomach is strong.”
He gave a chuckle, a pained one, but that was enough. She’d amused him. He let her take the shoe off.
This was not as easy as it might have been. His swelling foot told her he’d either sprained the ankle or bruised it quite badly. Luckily, the shoes were soft, thin leather, not practical for tramping in fields but easier to get off than boots.
Though his stockinged foot smelled only of wet earth, she recoiled as though it had been a rotting carcass and held her nose and pretended to gag and carried on as though she would swoon. He thought this was hilarious.
Males never did grow up. Not that this was always a problem. There were positive aspects of men being such simple creatures.
To look on the bright side, she wouldn’t have much trouble keeping him entertained for the remaining few miles of their journey.
And that was very much for the best, because she needed to keep herself distracted, too. The intimacy of holding his large, stockinged foot upon her knee was almost painful.
A short time later
The duke had told Olympia that Camberley Place was a ramshackle old house.
She had pictured an old manor house set in a rustic landscape. The word ramshackle had conjured images of later additions tacked on, creating a rambling, picturesque structure.
She was completely wrong.
Camberley Place was an immense house dating to Tudor times. From the outside it didn’t seem to have changed much since then.