Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,56

back, the ladies would be her dearest friends once more, and she’d tell them what she’d seen.

In other words, Cassandra Pomfret was about to experience true ruination, and this time Ashmont couldn’t disappear.

She felt oddly unmoved, as calm within as she appeared outwardly. Or maybe she was simply numb. The shock of being discovered. The shock of what had happened behind the curtain. The shock of Lady Bartham’s saying so little. No lecture. No scold of any kind. Only pure, venomous glee.

Ashmont offered his arm. Cassandra took it. Why not?

They bade the lady good day, most courteously, and turned away.

So ridiculous. The scene seemed to be lit up in Cassandra’s mind like a play in a theater. She saw the curtain swishing open in the instant she and Ashmont jerked apart. She saw Lady Bartham’s face: surprise, almost instantly succeeded by delight. Her voice, so sweetly poisonous.

Laughter bubbled up. Cassandra told herself she never succumbed to hysteria.

But then, she’d succumbed to him, hadn’t she?

The warmth and strength of his arm brought back forcibly the feel of his arms about her, the touch of his fingers on her face, the first, gentle kiss and those that followed. A part of her wanted to cry, too.

Hysteria. Not allowed.

They walked out of the room and on to the stairs and down them and through the door and out of Cremorne House. This door opened to the grounds rather than the river side.

“This is bad, yes?” Ashmont said as they stepped outside.

She looked up at him. He was biting his lip. His eyes sparkled like sapphires.

“Yes, b-but—” The absurdity of it struck her again and laughter welled up, throttling speech.

He made a choked sound. “Wait—w-wait. N-not here.”

He pulled her toward a patch of garden near one of the footpaths, shaded by trees and tall shrubbery.

They’d scarcely reached it when she giggled. The giggles swelled and irrupted into shrieks of laughter. She let go of his arm and turned away and laughed. Tears streamed from her eyes. It wasn’t funny. It oughtn’t to be funny, but it was too ridiculous.

Beside her, he snorted, then went off into whoops.

Still laughing, she pulled him deeper into the shrubbery.

It was ludicrous. She was in the worst trouble of her life, but she couldn’t stop laughing. The countess’s face, like something in a pantomime. Ashmont’s innocent expression and the courtly bow, as though Cassandra were presenting him to Queen Adelaide.

“C-calis-calisthenics,” she managed to get out. “Oh, she is—”

“Of all w-women.”

And off they went again.

At last they began to quiet, but the feelings, so unexpected, remained. She ought to be raging, and she was, at the unfairness of it. Yet mainly what she felt was the absurdity.

“I should have killed you when I had a chance,” she said.

“Too late,” he said. “Marry me.”

Ashmont braced himself.

He hated to see the laughter end. For a short time, it had felt as though they were conspirators who’d managed a complicated prank.

He only wished he’d quieted sooner, in order to fully enjoy the sight and sound of her. He wished he’d had longer to savor the rippling laughter and the wash of pink over her face and the light in her eyes and the way they crinkled shut when she laughed. He wanted to watch again the way she put her hand over her mouth and turned her head away, before giving up any attempt at propriety.

He wanted to see her laughing mouth, the one he’d kissed at long last. He wanted to kiss her while she laughed, and drink in that unadulterated enjoyment, the naughty delight—whatever it was, it was wonderful.

He’d tried not to laugh. This was a dreadful situation and laughing would be callous and feckless and everything she knew him to be.

But how could he not?

To have finally, finally, got a kiss, and more. To have finally, finally, got his hands on her.

Then to be caught. Behind a curtain! Like a scene in a farce.

But she’d felt the same. She’d laughed.

And now?

She wasn’t laughing.

His heart began to beat erratically and overfast.

He was aware of people coming and going, though not nearby.

From a distance came voices and the sounds of shooting. Practice areas, well away from the house. Here was mainly garden. While de Bérenger had made substantial alterations to the property, he hadn’t torn up the elegant plantings, but enhanced them and tucked his exercise areas in amongst them.

There were similar, somewhat secluded spots throughout the estate. The ingenious gentleman, in the company of a cooperative lady, could get a good