Mandy

She lit the awful smelling tallow candle in the pewter holder sitting on the cold stone floor and spotted a scribbled note.

She grabbed it up and read,

Mandy,

Don’t fret

. Went off on a little errand with Chauncey. The duke hasn’t brought back your horse yet, so we decided not to wake you. I’ll explain everything later.

Don’t walk about today…just don’t. Chauncey said you are to just stay put.

Ned

Mandy as she often reminded her twin, had entered the world a good four minutes before him. She was his elder, his confidante, his faithful friend. And this was how he had treated her? Odious boy, she was going to box his ears when he got back.

She poured cold water into her basin and shivered as she washed up and got dressed in the shirt and breeches she had been wearing while they were in hiding. She took a few extra moments to brush her long blonde hair and then braided it, and made her way outdoors.

It was a beautiful summer day and she breathed the sweet scents of the heather in deeply and thought of the duke.

He was the most annoying, controlling, arrogant man she had ever known, and yet, the image of him in her mind set her heart to fluttering absurdly.

His presence and he had such presence, sent sparks of excitement rushing through her body. She couldn’t look into his blue glittering eyes without suddenly falling apart. Where was the independent young woman when he was near? Gone, that’s where. He turned her into a ball of emotions that wrapped her mind with confusion. Just what was wrong with her?

Yes, she was a green girl, she knew this and he was an experienced rogue. What did she know about love-making?

She hadn’t had more than a few outrageous kisses in the last few years, but she knew and understood a great deal.

She and her friends had often giggled about the handsome blacksmith in town and her dearest friend Lucy had told her that she had allowed him to take her in the alley behind his shop and kiss and touch her till she swooned. Lucy said she meant to go back in the evening to do more of the same.

Mandy had warned her, pointing out that in the new novel, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin, which they had been reading over and over again, since its release in January that a properly raised young woman would never engage in such outrageous behavior.

Lucy had wagged a finger and laughed saying that Lydia, Elizabeth’s young sister, in the novel, had run off with Wickham, without the benefit of marriage and while she didn’t intend to do that, she did intend to have a little fun, after all. Why not, she had asked Mandy, men do the very same thing without the benefit of marriage—so why should they be deprived the same thrills?

Mandy thought about this and sighed.

Indeed, she had been kissed, in fact, recently by Sir Owen and it had been a pleasant, although not an earth shattering experience like the one Lucy had described the kisses with the blacksmith had been.

She sighed and pushed these meanderings aside. What had that to do with anything?

At the moment, her brother and Chauncey had literally left her in the dark, treating her as though…as though she didn’t signify. It was vexing in the extreme.

Well, it wasn’t all their fault, because the truth of the matter was that she was without a horse because of the odious duke!

She made her way outside, where she hurried to the woods and took a deer path toward the rivulet.

Life at the moment was a bit trying. Perhaps she had not thought things through when she broke her brother out of prison?

She was hungry, she was blue-deviled and wasn’t sure what the future would hold. She found the berry bush she had been seeking and stood eating berries for a time.

From the position of the sun, it was getting close to noon. Would they be back yet? A pleasant breeze swept over her and she opened her leather waistcoat as she climbed over the rocks and took a shortcut to the abbey ruins.

Finally, she found a shady spot, well hidden from immediate view, dropped down and leaned back against the weathered limestone of the ruins.

She must have dosed for a sudden sound made her jump forward as her eyes snapped open.

He stood there blotting out the sun.

As before, she thought of a mountain when she looked up at him. He was so broad in the buckskin riding jacket he wore. His breeches hugged his lower body and his thighs were muscular and for a moment she allowed her eyes to travel down and then back up. She swallowed as her gaze went back to his face. His hair was uncovered and black, so black as it blew around his well shaped head.