Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(31)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

Ridley grinned, his hands fumbling at the half-opened falls to his breeches. “We’ll shut your mouth good and proper this time.”

No.

True fear sparked at the back of Apollo’s mind and he lurched up, butting his head into Ridley’s middle. The guard fell on his arse, yelling. Apollo thrashed, kicking, hitting anything he could connect with.

Something slammed into his head.

He glared blearily up. Leech’s goddamned cudgel. He’d take the thing away and beat the guard with his own weapon, by God.

Tyne stepped on his throat. Apollo’s lungs heaved. Once. Twice.

No air.

Thrice…

Blackness descended.

THE MORNING SUN dappled the forest floor beneath his feet as Maximus tramped along the next day. He’d risen early, restless without his usual exercises in the London cellar. His work was in the city and he had an itch to return to it.

Courting a woman for marriage was a trying business.

Belle bumped her head under his palm as if in sympathy. Percy and Starling had already ranged ahead, but Belle liked to stay by his side.

Well, usually, anyway.

Her narrow ears suddenly perked and she was off, bounding gracefully through the underbrush. He could hear the other dogs yipping in greeting.

Ridiculously, he thought he could feel his heart beat faster. Despite their antagonism, despite her threats to his equilibrium, he wanted to see her, and right now he wouldn’t examine why.

In another few steps he made the clearing with the pond and looked about. He could see the dogs milling a quarter way around the pond—even Bon Bon was there—but he couldn’t yet see her on the path.

And then he did see her and arousal went straight to his cock.

Artemis Greaves was in the pond, as graceful as a naiad, her skirts bound up at her waist, standing thigh deep in the sparkling water.

How dare she.

He strode swiftly around the pond to stand at the shore nearest to where she was wading. “Miss Greaves.”

She glanced at him and if anything looked displeased to see him. “Your Grace.”

“What,” he said softly but dangerously, “are you doing in the pond?”

“I would have thought that obvious,” she murmured as she began moving toward the shore. “I’m wading.”

He gritted his teeth. The closer she came to shore the more milky white leg emerged from the water. It was soon apparent that she was bare from just below the juncture of her thighs all the way to her narrow feet. Her skin glistened in the morning sun, pale and vulnerable, wholly, terribly erotic.

As a gentleman he should look away.

But damn it, it was his pond.

“Anyone could happen upon you,” he hissed, aware at the back of his mind that he sounded like a prudish old woman.

“Do you really think so?” she asked, finally reaching the shore and stepping onto the mossy bank of the pond. “I doubt most of your guests usually rise before nine of the clock at the earliest. Penelope hardly ever emerges from her rooms before noon.”

She stood there, head cocked, as if she truly wanted to debate the morning habits of his guests. She’d made no move to lower her skirts. He watched a bead of water slide slickly down one rounded thigh, over the pretty contours of her knee, faster down the smooth slope of her calf to drip off one delicate anklebone.

He snapped his gaze up to her face.

She still looked merely curious, as if standing half nude in front of him was a completely acceptable way to start the day.

Good God, did she think him a eunuch?

He wanted to shake her, to scold her until she hung her head in shame. He wanted to—

“Put down your skirts,” he growled. “If this is your way of provoking me because of our disagreement, I’ll have you know it won’t work.”

“That wasn’t my intent,” she said calmly. “As I told you, I was simply wading for no other reason but the enjoyment of it. However, I do think you incorrect.”

“I…” He couldn’t follow her with her legs so alluringly exposed. “What?”

“What makes you think I can’t provoke you?” She arched an eyebrow and untied the knot that held her skirts up. They fell, shrouding her gorgeous legs to the ankle, and that did not annoy him at all.

“You’re not to go wading in my pond again,” he said.

She shrugged and picked up her shoes and stockings where they lay on the path. “Very well, Your Grace, but it’s a great pity. I should’ve liked to go swimming.”

She pivoted and glided up the path, bewitching bare ankles flashing under her skirts, leaving Maximus to imagine her swimming in his pond, gloriously nude.

All. That. White. Flesh.

For a second his mind seemed to stutter.

When he looked up again, she and the dogs were nearly into the woods again, her bottom swaying enticingly. He actually had to trot to catch up.

He glanced sideways at her when he did and saw her lips pressed firmly together.

“You know how to swim?”

For a moment he thought she wouldn’t deign to answer. Then she sighed. “Yes. Apollo and I were allowed to run mostly wild as children. There was a little pond on a neighboring farmer’s land. We’d sneak over there and after some trial and error, we both learned to swim.”

Maximus frowned. Craven’s report had been very factual—the date of her birth, who her parents were, her relation to Lady Penelope—but he found there was more he’d like to know about Miss Greaves. It was always prudent to learn all one could about one’s enemies.

“You didn’t have a governess?”

She laughed softly, though it sounded sad. “We had three. They’d stay for months or even a year or so, and then Papa would run out of money and have to let them go. Somehow Apollo and I learned to read and write and do simple sums, but not much more than that. I have no French, can’t play any instrument, never learned to draw.”

“Your educational lack doesn’t seem to bother you,” he observed.

She shrugged. “Would it make a difference if I were bothered? I have some other skills not usually seen in ladies: swimming, as I told you, and how to shoot a gun. I can bargain down a butcher to within an inch of his life. I know how to make soap and how to put a bill collector off. I can do mending but not embroidery, can drive a cart but not ride a horse, know how to grow cabbages and carrots and even make them into a nice soup, but I haven’t the least idea how to trellis roses.”

Maximus’s hands tightened into fists at his side at this recitation. No gentleman should let his delicately bred daughter grow to womanhood without the most basic instruction of her station.