Page 42 of Return to Satterthwaite Court

Kate found herself pinned beneath Lieutenant Heywood’s not inconsiderable weight. Her riding hat had been knocked askew in the descent. It tipped over one of her eyes at a rakish angle. “Did someone just shoot at us?” she gasped.

“Not at us,” he replied. “But too near for my comfort.”

“And for mine. Look.” She stared at the branch where the lieutenant had been standing only seconds before. It hung, broken, overhead. The bullet had splintered it nearly in half. “Good heavens. It’s a miracle you weren’t hit!”

“Bloody stupid poachers,” he muttered.

“Is that who it was?”

“Or the gamekeeper,” he said. “The shot came from near the woods.”

There was a dense line of trees in the distance, marking the boundary of an overgrown woodland. Kate waited for someone to emerge from it, but though the branches rustled, no errant hunter or gamekeeper appeared. Whoever had fired in their direction, the culprit didn’t seem keen to reveal himself.

She looked up at the lieutenant, still winded from her fall to the ground. “Whoever it was,” she said, breathing hard, “I believe you may have just saved my life.”

He cast the broken branch a narrow glance. “My own, more like it. One inch to the right and I’d be—”

“Don’t say it.” She clutched at the fold of his coat. “Please. It’s too horrid to think of.”

Lieutenant Heywood’s brows notched. Now the immediate danger had passed, he seemed to register the impropriety of their position—the two of them together on the ground, practically in a lover’s embrace. “You shouldn’t be here, Kate,” he said.

Her pulse quickened at the unexpected intimacy of his address. “Kate, is it? You’re very familiar, Lieutenant Heywood.”

He levered himself over her. A thick lock of black hair flopped over his forehead. It softened his stern features, making him appear almost boyish. “It’s not Lieutenant Heywood any longer. I’ve left the Navy.”

“Have you?” It was news to her. Happy news. She wasn’t keen to marry a sailor who promptly returned to sea. “Mr. Heywood, then.”

“Charles,” he said. “If you please.”

Her blood fizzed with warmth. “Very well. Charles.”

He nodded once, as though the entirety of their relationship was now established on mutually acceptable ground.

Kate impulsively reached up to smooth his hair from his brow. He stilled at her touch, but he didn’t object to it. “A wife’s privilege,” she said.

The cheeky statement was somewhat ruined by the breathlessness in her voice. She’d never before been this close with a gentleman.

He gazed down at her steadily, a look in his eyes that was hard to read. “You’re playing with fire, you know.”

“By teasing you?”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

It took an effort not to blush. “Perhaps at first,” she confessed, “before you became so unpleasant.”

Moving off of her, he regained his feet. “What can I say? I’m an unpleasant fellow.”

Kate struggled to a sitting position. She recalled how he’d looked standing in Bond Street, holding the filthy street pup wrapped in the folds of his greatcoat. “Yes,” she said. “An absolute ogre.”

He extended his hand to her.

She took it, allowing him to help her up. “If teasing you is playing with the fire, then—”

“I didn’t mean me.” He looked in the direction of the woods once more, scanning the tree line, before urging her back toward the waiting carriage. “I was talking about your coming to Devonshire, first to Tiverton and then here, to Satterthwaite Court, where anyone might recognize you.”

Kate trudged alongside him. “No one knows me at Satterthwaite Court,” she informed him as she brushed the dirt from her habit. “I never heard of the place until this morning. As for Tiverton, I don’t visit with enough frequency to be remarked.”

“You’d be remarked wherever you go,” Charles said.