Page 64 of Distracting the Duke

She leaned too far forward, toppled into his arms, and slid down his body to the ground.

He felt a sharp pull on his wrist. The devil! “Wait a moment. We’re tangled up.”

Just as he and Clara had been, on the day they were wrestling over the Pajou. Who’d have thought so much would have changed since then? He smiled at the memory.

“Your Grace, I’ve caught my hair on your cufflink,” Ellie said in a muffled voice, trying to turn her blushing face away.

He should recommend cufflinks to his bachelor friends as a way of ensnaring beautiful women.

With a wink, he said, “I’ll have us freed in an instant. There, that’s done it.”

A gasp of alarm from Ellie made him turn round sharply. “What?”

On the other side of the stable yard, just emerging from the Hall’s rear door, stood Clara and Snetty.

Excellent! They could both join them on their ride. He lifted a hand to beckon them over, but Clara had already turned and was hurrying back the way she’d come.

“What the deuce?” He looked at Snetty for an explanation, only to discover that his friend was marching toward him with a face as black as thunder.

“Good God, man,” Marcus said. “What on earth is the matter?”

Snetty halted virtually nose to nose with him, and he could feel the enmity sparking out of his friend.

“It’s a damn bad show—forgive me, Miss Soper, dratted bad show—that’s what it is!”

Marcus peered at him. “What is? I’m completely at a loss. Do lower your voice, my friend, you’re making Gladiator skittish.”

“I should knock you down!” Snetty growled.

Before Marcus could marshal his thoughts enough to reply, he saw an ominous movement out of the corner of his eye. He reacted instantly, and ended up once again with the limp form of Miss Soper hanging in his arms.

He glowered at Snetty. “Now isn’t that just splendid! She’s gone and fainted again, and I shan’t be getting my ride. It’s your turn now. I’ve already done my bit for the all-too-fragile Miss Soper.” He dumped the irksome woman into the other man’s arms.

Snetty accepted his beautiful burden with alacrity and gave Marcus a puzzled stare. “You no longer want her?”

“No. Not in the way you’re implying. You know damn well I’m in love with Lady Tinniswood. Miss Soper’s hair merely caught on my cufflink as I lifted her down from Leda. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a word or two to say to Clara.”

Tapping his crop irritably against his Hessians, he stomped off back to the house, praying to the heavens that he might find Clara alone, and that when he did, she would listen to him.

Certain she would have fled upstairs to her bedchamber, he clattered up the stairs and strode directly to her room. Taking a moment to catch his breath and straighten his scarf, he rapped sharply on the door with his crop.

Clara’s voice was so loud when she replied, he started—she must be directly on the other side. Her words were very much what he’d expected to hear.

“Go away!”

“Clara please, you’re being extremely foolish.”

“Don’t talk to me as if I were a schoolroom miss. In fact, don’t talk to me at all.”

“Clara, I—” He looked up and down the passage, then ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Clara,” he whispered, putting his mouth to the keyhole, “do you really want us to have this discussion where anyone might hear? I’m not afraid what the servants might think, but I should have thought you’d be.”

There was a chilling silence from the room beyond. To his enormous relief, a key turned in the lock, and the door opened, just a crack at first, then fully.

She stood there, pale with roiling emotions, her dark eyes and hair in stark contrast to her pallor. Even her lips, pressed into a forbidding line, had lost color. In her white dress and black pelisse, she looked like a charcoal sketch or a frieze done in grisaille on the wall of a church.

How he longed to kiss the blood back into those lips, the roses into those cheeks! But with Clara, as he now knew, words were required first. It was only with gentle persuasion that he would be able to make her listen to him.

“Thank you,” he said, with some formality. “I would like to come in, if I may.”