A Duke in Shining Armor

She pulled away from the women and marched to the mirror.

They followed her and stood peering into the mirror around her reflection, a frame of smiling faces.

“Perfect!” said Mrs. Thorne.

“Perfect,” her minions echoed.

“Perfect,” Molly said breathlessly. “Oh, I never.”

“I’ll bet you never,” Olympia said.

She straightened her spectacles, marched to the door, and pulled it open.

Distantly aware of the chorus of dismayed voices behind her, she continued her march to the room next to hers.

She didn’t knock or stop to think. She pulled the door open, marched in, and slammed the door behind her.

“Is this one of your jokes?” she said. “Because . . .”

She found herself staring at the muscled back, taut bottom, and long, muscled legs of a man something over six feet tall, who stood, quite naked, in a large basin before the fire.

He went still, and Olympia ought to have turned her head—or better yet, marched out of the room with a semblance of dignity.

Evidently she wasn’t yet fully in her right mind, because all she could think was how different an unclothed, fully grown man looked—in the flesh, literally—from a naked little boy.

The back of his neck and his shoulders and . . . muscle, miles of muscle. Good heavens, his arms. The arms that had carried her up from the river.

She’d seen marble statues of naked men. Who hadn’t? She’d seen drawings. But he was alive, so very alive. As still as he stood, he was breathing, and she caught the faint motion of shoulder and back muscles. His skin wasn’t marble or paper white but golden in the room’s firelight. The amber light glinted on the dark hair along his arms and lower legs, and altogether it was—he was . . . nothing like a statue . . . and heat was swamping her and breathing was more difficult than it ought to be.

“I might have known,” he said. He started to turn.

She started to turn, too, toward the door again, but her limbs refused to cooperate, and she failed to make a dignified exit before he reached for the towel draped over the nearby chair and wrapped it about him. Not completely. His broad shoulders, most of his back, and the lower part of his legs remained in view. He stepped out of the basin and stood, dripping, on the rug.

She lifted her chin and feigned a composure she by no means felt.

“You might have, indeed,” she said. She told herself she was six and twenty, not a schoolroom miss by many years—seven long ones—and—and—what had made her burst in here?

The dress.

“It’s French,” she said.

“What?”

He turned, and now she was treated to the front view of strong neck, shoulders, and upper torso. Warmth rushed over her in waves and she felt her jaw start to drop.

Good heavens, he was . . . his physique . . . so . . . athletic. She was still recovering from the back view. The front . . . his collarbone . . . his chest . . .

Stop gawking, you ninny.

She made herself glare down at her attire, though in fact this was the most beautiful, most dashing day dress she’d ever worn.

“It’s French,” she said waving an only slightly shaky hand over the dress. “And I won’t tell you what’s underneath because you must already know, but I’ll have you know I know exactly what it is.”

“Undergarments?” he said. “Because it looks too—” He gestured with the hand not holding the towel. “Too much of a dress, in what can’t possibly be your natural shape. With all that skirt swelling out, and the sleeves like wine barrels? Obviously what you’re wearing underneath is a large stock of armature.”

“The male mind is truly a wonder,” she said. “That isn’t the point.”

“I knew there’d be a point,” he said. “And modest fellow that I am, I didn’t believe for a moment that you exploded into my presence with a wild longing to wash my back.”

Heat swarmed over her face and her neck and other places that were not supposed to call attention to themselves.

“Brilliant thinking,” she said. She fluttered the splendid mantelet draped about her shoulders. “It’s this. Blond. Black blond. At the very least, suitable for a married woman—not but what I entertain great doubts as to whether any matron of my acquaintance wears black and pink embroidered underthings. And pink ribbons! I ask you.”

His eyes became hooded, but she didn’t need to see them. She felt his gaze going down and up and down and up.

Her skin prickled, the way it had done the first time she’d met him, only more so, though she was seven years older and had seen more than her share of rakes in action. Though never in action with her.

“If you’re asking whether I can see your undergarments, the answer is no,” he said, his voice a shade deeper than before. “And since I can’t see them and you seem to be thoroughly covered—rather more thoroughly than before, I might add—”

“Never mind,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking, to think you’d understand. I shall make the best of it and tell myself at least I’m interesting, and after all, perhaps I’m far too hungry to think in an orderly fashion. I’m an orderly person, I’ll have you know. And boring. I have never worn black blond in my life!”

She started to turn away, for the exit she should have made rather a while ago.

“About time you started, then,” he said. “It suits you.”

She turned back. “It doesn’t suit me in the least. It’s dashing. I’m not dashing.”

“Could have fooled me,” he said. “Bolting from your wedding and such. Climbing over the wall. Falling out of the boat. Whatever else one might say about you—and I’m not sure what to say, frankly—boring isn’t on the list.”

She waved a hand dismissively. “That isn’t the real me. That is Olympia a trifling well to go.”

He lifted one black eyebrow. “A trifling?”

“The point is, I am no longer slightly intoxicated—”

“More than slightly was my estimation, and I’m an expert, recollect.”

“In any event, it was a stupid thing to do, and though I’ve racked my brains I cannot produce an intelligent or even intelligible excuse.”

Panic wasn’t a good excuse. True, not much time had passed between the courtship and her accepting the proposal and the wedding. True, she’d let herself be swept up in her mother’s and aunt’s excitement. Those weren’t good excuses, either. Something had happened to her this morning, even before the brandy, else she wouldn’t have drunk the brandy.

Maybe the brandy had propelled her, but in his company, the effects seemed to continue, even as the alcohol wore off.

No, in his company, the effects were getting worse.

She glanced down at the dress, and stifled a prickle of longing. “We’d better go back.”

There was a pause, and she waited for the I told you so. Hadn’t he asked her, several times, whether she was sure she wanted to continue? Hadn’t he pointed out how easy it would be to return?

“We are bloody well not going back,” he said.

Chapter 5

Though Ripley wore nothing but a towel, it would have taken a great deal more than near nudity to disconcert him. On the contrary, he would have paid a hundred pounds to catch the look on her face when she burst in on him. He’d been painfully tempted to turn, sans towel. He would have paid two hundred for her reaction to the frontal view.

Luckily he’d remembered in the nick of time that she was Ashmont’s chosen one. Joke or not, a fellow didn’t go about presenting his naked front to his best friend’s bride-to-be.

In any event, the sight of a woman in a dashing dress, hair coming down, ranting at him while her bosom heaved up and down like a raging sea—and he fresh and clean in his birthday suit—was likely to trigger a lot of vain hopes in the sensitive fellow below his waist, aggravation Ripley could do without.

Equally important: In ordinary circumstances one could expect Ashmont to treat a s

cene like this as a great joke. These were not ordinary circumstances. While Ripley had no experience of strange encounters with friends’ brides-to-be, he suspected even Ashmont might turn out to be a trifle tetchy when it came to his affianced bride seeing his best friend bare-arsed.

“That ship has sailed,” he said. “We’re not going back.”

“Do not be nonsensical,” she said. “You’ve asked me several times if I wouldn’t rather—”

“That was before,” he said. “But you’ve crossed the Tiber—”

“The Rubicon, you provoking man!”

“The die is cast,” he said. “I’m taking you to your aunt, as we agreed, and you will stop changing your mind every five minutes.”

“I do not change it every five minutes! I haven’t changed it at all. Until now.”