The Duke Effect (The Rogue Files #7) - Sophie Jordan Page 0,5

of earlier foraging. It was much wiser to cut bark from one of the branches rather than the trunk.

She adjusted the strap of her satchel across her chest and hiked up her skirts, tucking the front hem into the belt at her waist. Thankfully, she’d spent a girlhood climbing trees all over the shire. Even though it had been some time since she had done so, it felt a familiar task.

She searched and found a handhold and hefted herself up, her boots slipping and scuffling until they gained a foothold. Grunting, she scaled the trunk until she reached the first outcropping of branches, wishing she had worn her gloves. Her palms were stinging.

She steadied her weight, wedging her boots in the V of branches. She purposefully did not look down. Not that she was scared of heights. It just seemed sensible to avoid doing so. Intent on her task, she crawled out onto one of the sturdier branches. Carefully balancing her weight, she squeezed her thighs around the branch and inched out as far as she dared, determined to collect bark far from areas she had already harvested.

Pausing, she fumbled inside her satchel for her small paring knife.

It was precarious business. She moved cautiously, slowly, so as not to lose her balance. Soon, she was slicing slivers of thumb-size bark, tucking them inside her palm until she had well over a dozen pieces.

Once again, she fumbled inside her satchel, retrieving the small jar within and securing the slivers inside the vessel, screwing the lid back on tightly once she was finished.

“There,” she breathed heavily, satisfied with her efforts. It should result in a fine amount of willow bark tea . . . with quite a bit left over for her to experiment with in her various tinctures and tonics.

A flash of movement below caught her gaze and she froze, her eyes flaring wide in her face. She gasped.

There was a person. A man.

A man directly beneath her in the water.

She recoiled at the unexpected sight of him. There was a strange man in her pond! How dare he!

The motion upset her balance. There was no swallowing her cry as she wobbled upon her perch, attempting to regain her balance to no avail. Her clenched knees lost their grip.

She slipped, tilting sideways, and then went down . . . falling. Dropping with an unceremonious graceless splash in the pond.

Chapter 3

Nora emerged, sputtering and squawking before the very individual to have caught her so unawares. The wretched individual who had no right to be in the Warrington pond. Who was this interloper?

She shoved the wet, heavy skeins of her hair back from her face and gawked at him. He stared at her with equal astonishment from eyes the color of coal. His wet hair was equally dark and plastered about his head in wild disarray.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, treading water and not with much ease as her skirts had come untucked and were a dire nuisance, tangling amid her kicking legs.

He looked from her and up to the tree, deducing her origin and doubtlessly confirming she had not fallen from the sky.

“Did you not hear my question?” she demanded. Water splashed against her chin and lips as she bobbed in the water, and she coughed a bit.

“I’m availing myself of a swim in this pond,” the stranger finally and very reasonably replied.

Far too reasonably. As though trespassing were a reasonable and acceptable thing. As though availing himself of someone’s pond for a swim were a reasonable thing to do and not at all illicit act.

Certainly, she had done the same thing for years, but that was neither here nor there.

“I can clearly see that. It’s your presumption to indulge in a swim here that I find so very objectionable, sirrah.”

Sirrah?

Did that come from her lips? She sounded such a prig. As dour and grating as Mrs. Pembroke from the village. Nora had been forced into that unpleasant woman’s company on far too many occasions. She could scarcely stomach the lady . . . and she certainly could not stomach the notion that she was anything like the wretched woman.

“You’re trespassing.” She winced at the shrill edge to her voice.

Instead of answering that charge, he replied with equanimity, “What were you doing up in that tree?”

“Never you mind my business,” she sputtered. Why was he still here in this pond? With her? “Get out! Out!”

He lifted a hand and wiped it over his face as though clearing it of water