“The dukedom? My father died when I was nineteen, but I’ve always been titled. I was born a marquis.”
That would be a barrier from the start, she thought. There would be boys who would be jealous and want to bring him down for his imagined superiority. And some boys would toadeat him, wishing to be friends with a titled boy. Few of them would see who he was, himself—by all accounts a shy and lonely boy.
And as he grew older, women would be added to the mix, wanting him for what he could bring them, not for who he actually was. And all most people would see was his position and his titles and his assumed advantages.
As she had at first. Seeing only the arrogant-seeming, self-contained man.
She thought about the time five years before, when he’d knocked her off her horse, after she’d disrupted the hunt. She’d mentioned it to Martha at the time, and Martha had made inquiries. He’d been staying with Michael Stretton. Of course.
Martha had been scathing.Those Strettons invited the duke, hoping to snare him for one of their daughters.She’d snorted.That lot think so much of themselves, a duke in the family would be just what they think they’d deserve. I don’t know exactly what happened, but by all accounts the duke really fell out with his friend and stormed off in a temper.
“I heard you left Michael Stretton with a broken nose,” she said.
He frowned. “What made you think of that? It was years ago.”
She shrugged. “Did you? Break his nose, I mean.”
He glanced away. “I didn’t wait to see the result, but it was a good solid punch, so it wouldn’t surprise me. Serve him right for—for what he did. I don’t like being lied to.”
Because Michael Stretton had sent the duke to punish her for ruining the hunt? And lied to him, suggesting she was male? She recalled the duke’s horror when he realized he’d roughly dragged a girl off her horse.
He’d broken his friend’s nose for her. It shouldn’t have pleased her, but it did. Immensely.
“Thank you.”
“For breaking Michael Stretton’s nose?” He gave a quizzical half smile. “You didn’t like him?”
“No.” But she wasn’t going to explain. There was no need to tell him of her embarrassing infatuation with Michael Stretton when she was a green girl, how she’d thought him the handsomest boy in the world, the best rider.
She’d watched him from afar, adoring him from a distance, expecting nothing from him, knowing she was well out of his class in all the ways that counted. They’d never even talked.
And then came the night of his twenty-first birthday. His family held a ball. Hidden in a tree, George had watched through the long ballroom windows as he’d danced with all the prettiest girls in the district. She wasn’t even jealous—perhaps a tiny bit envious, but more wistful, really. And admiring.
And then he’d come outside with a friend to smoke a cigarillo, standing below her tree. And the way he’d talked about some of those girls—girls she knew were decent, virtuous girls—had shocked her. She must have dislodged a twig or something, because his friend had looked up and said, “I say, there’s a girl up there in your tree, Stretton.”
George had frozen, mortified.
And then Michael Stretton said, “I know. She follows me everywhere, the dirty little slut. She’s too scrawny to screw yet, but her day will come.”
George’s infatuation had shriveled and died on the spot. And when a year later he’d come sniffing around, presumably deciding she was no longer so scrawny, she’d rejected him emphatically.
Later, when he discovered she was the one disrupting the hunt, his anger had become personal. And vindictive.
So the thought that the duke had been responsible for Michael Stretton’s broken nose delighted her.
“It wasn’t the first time Stretton had crossed your path, then?”
“No. He and his friends often tried to run me to earth, threatening to give me a thrashing. And worse.” There was a grim look in her eyes as she added, “They almost had me one time, but the dear old squire came roaring up, waving his whip and threatening to horsewhip the lot of them for treating a lady so.” She smiled reminiscently. “A lady. I was in breeches and boots with mud on my face and hands, but the old squire, he was a gentleman.” She grinned. “Michael and his friends ran like frightened little rabbits.”
He took her hand in his and squeezed. “Sounds like the squire was a good man.” She made no move to pull her hand away.
“He was, and a force of nature to boot. For all that Michael and his friends thought themselves so much better born than the squire, the old man was a true gentleman—something that they could never be. He didn’t leave it there, either; he visited each of their parents and told them whathe’d seen, and what he promised if he caught them at it again. His threats worked too. They never bothered me again.”
Instead Stretton had tried to get Hart to do his dirty work. Hart wished now that he’d given Stretton a good thrashing, instead of just a broken nose. His hand tightened around hers.
She smiled, a mixture of triumph and smugness. “That nose never healed properly, you know. It’s permanently crooked. And Michael was always so vain about his good looks. So thank you.” She leaned over and kissed him. Her lips were sweet and soft.
“Now that’s an idea,” he said and pulled her across his lap. He pulled up her skirt and discovered something interesting. “Going old-fashioned today, are we? I like it.”
