Page 6 of The Duke’s Suspicion

“I thought you weren’t a lady, Miss Burke,” he teased.

Her spine stiffened. “I was referring to the horse.”

Forcing a laugh, he took one stride forward. Somehow, however, his boot never met the ground. Instead, his other leg slid from beneath him and he found himself on his arse in the mud, skidding down the slope. Miss Burke, damn her, had the foresight to twitch the reins from his grasp so that Lady Jane did not come tumbling down after like some awful parody of a child’s nursery rhyme. And to add insult to injury—for the slope was dotted with sharp rocks—when he splashed to a halt in the ditch at the bottom, his hat fell off and was swept away on the water.

“Mr. Laurens!” There was laughter in her voice, he felt sure of it. “Are you harmed?”

“Don’t—”

—dismount.

But the order had not left his lips in time. She was already on the ground. Her boots soon found the same slick spot, and faster than he could shout or she could scream, she had slid and tumbled her way down and nearly landed in his lap.

Alas, some part of him whispered devilishly, not nearly enough.

Such wayward thoughts ought to have scattered when she began to laugh. That outlandish sound ought not to have made her more attractive yet. A proper lady, at least those among his acquaintance, would have been either frightened or mortified by their predicament.

For her part, Lady Jane gave a snort and began to amble away. He watched the horse go. “What’s that phrase of yours, Miss Burke?”

A frown of incomprehension notched her brow. “Do you mean A Thiarna Dia?” Her freckles stood out dark against the sudden rush of pink that streaked across her cheeks. “But it’s…well, it’s blasphemous, you know.”

As he hoisted himself to his feet, he felt cold mud slither beneath his clothes and settle into every crack and crevice. “Not blasphemous enough.”

Though he held out a hand to help her rise, she sprang up unaided, unfazed by the fall. With a flick of one wrist, she shook out her skirts, spattering his ruined boots with more mud. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think before I—” Her expression turned rueful. “My sister would say I never do.”

For a moment, the smile slipped from her face and she stared past his shoulder. Not with longing, as one does when imagining a place of respite at the end of a journey. But steeling herself against reproach, as if she had been chastised often and expected to be again.

He was a soldier. He’d had intimate acquaintance with dirt. And cold. And aches in places well-bred people did not mention. “What possible difference could a little more mud make, Miss Burke?” he said, trying to reassure her. Never mind that this was not the appearance he had planned to make at his homecoming.

“Well, the rain will likely wash some of it off,” she said, dispelling her momentary despair with a shrug, tipping her face toward the sky. The morning sun had given way to first to clouds, then to heavy mist, which had shifted over the last quarter hour to a steady drizzle. When she met his gaze once more, she had tacked her usual stubborn expression back in place.

Now, however, he could guess that something else hid just beneath the surface. Something softer and less sure. Experimentally, he held out an arm, expecting her once more to refuse his help. But after a moment’s hesitation, she threaded her hand lightly around his elbow.

When they reached Lady Jane, she caught the reins in her other hand and kept walking. Before he could offer to help her back into the saddle, she said, “It’s better this way, don’t you think?”

“Safer, yes.” No sense in risking another fall, for either horse or rider.

Walking arm in arm was not without risk, however. Though the pressure of her hand was slight, he could feel himself being drawn ever so slightly off his usual course nevertheless. He had always been the straight arrow, the plumb line. But from the moment this woman had been blown into his life, she’d been tugging him off-balance.

Determined to regain his center, he squared his shoulders and lengthened his stride. He was an army officer. For God’s sake, he was a duke! Neither wind, nor rain, nor a copper-haired sprite would stay him from his duty.

“Miss Burke, I think it’s time I explained—”

“Please tell me that’s Hawesdale Chase.” Though they spoke at the same time, he heard the weariness in her voice.

Below them, nestled in a grove of poplars, stood a red brick house with tall, narrow windows and a chimney at either end, from which ribbons of smoke unfurled like the faintest traces of pencil sketched against a slate sky. A respectable manor by almost any standard, and compared to the cottage in which they had sheltered, a mansion.

He drew a deep breath. It was not that he hesitated to speak the truth, but rather that the truth was complicated. “In the time of the Tudor kings, that was Hawesdale Chase, yes. Intended as an autumnal retreat. A hunting lodge, as the name implies. But when the estate passed from that family, another house was built and claimed the name.”

“Your house. Is it near?”

“Not quite half a mile away. This one now serves as its gatehouse.”

“Gatehouse?” She tipped her gaze upward but did not meet his eyes. “Then Hawesdale Chase must be quite large…”

“See for yourself.”

He directed her attention past the gatehouse to the denser woodland behind it, divided from them by what was, on any ordinary day, a picturesque winding stream. The ground was thick with freshly fallen foliage. Only a few leaves now remained to filter the view. Above the bare branches, the rolling landscape rose to grander heights, not quite mountains. Nestled at the foot of those rugged hills stood a sprawling mansion, the fever dream of some Jacobean architect whose love of pierced work, scrolls, and other ornamentation had known no bounds. The most charitable compliment Tristan had ever been able to pay the house was that it was almost symmetrical.