A Duke in Shining Armor

He heard Olympia scream.

Horrified, Olympia watched the chair bump down to the path alongside the river then across it and over the riverbank, into the water. There it struck something, with a jolt hard enough to make Ripley’s head snap back. The chair tipped over on its side.

She ran back the way she’d come and down into the water. It was shallow, but rocky. She splashed to where the chair lay.

A dark, dripping head came up. Ripley looked up at her and laughed.

Her heart, which seemed to have stopped altogether, sprang back into action so quickly it made her dizzy, and hot and cold at the same time.

She’d thought . . . she’d thought . . .

But no, there he was, the great blockhead, laughing. All in one piece. No blood. Not dead. She wanted to kill him.

“You reckless man!” she cried. “You could have broken your neck.”

“You’re wet,” he said.

There was a low rumble in the distance. He tipped his head back and gazed at the sky. “And about to get wetter.”

She looked up. The previously blue sky was swiftly shrinking behind the grey clouds massing above their heads. She heard another rumble, louder and nearer.

She grabbed the chair and turned it upright. Her hands shook. “Get up!” she said. “Get up!”

Using the chair for support, he hauled himself upright.

She was already wet. Getting wetter didn’t worry her. But she didn’t fancy standing in the open while a thunderstorm bore down on them.

“Sit,” she said.

“It’s broken, and you can’t push me uphill in it, even this mild uphill,” he said. “Not that I’m eager to get on that thing again. Look where it took me. There I was, minding my own business, when it decided it wanted a swim.”

“You let go! I saw you!”

“I was tired of fighting with it.”

“You could have broken your neck, your thick skull!” She wished she didn’t care what happened to him. She wished somebody, anybody else had followed her out of Newland House the other day—was it only three days?—and brought her back, before she could become infatuated with the wrong man.

“I didn’t remember how rocky the riverbed is here,” the Wrong Man said. “Farther downriver the bottom’s smoother.”

She was well aware of the rocky river bottom here. She didn’t want to think about what might have happened. She wanted to be out of this river, where he’d nearly killed himself.

“Never mind.” The rumbling grew louder. The churning clouds darkened the world about them. “We have to get back.” She tried to push the chair up the riverbank, a job that turned out to be harder than it looked.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Leave it.”

She kept pushing. She needed to fight something. It might as well be this curst piece of furniture.

He let out a sigh and joined her, each taking one corner of the chair’s back. She hoped he was using it to support his bad ankle. Then she told herself he wasn’t hers to worry about. He wasn’t her problem. She had problems enough. She was going to have to teach herself to love another man because that man still wanted her, and she was a practical and sensible girl, and marrying him was the practical and sensible thing to do.

“The fishing house is around the next curve,” he said, nodding that way. “Level ground, not uphill, and much nearer than the house.”

She looked in the direction he’d indicated, then upward, in the direction she’d come from. She wasn’t sure where the house was. She had no idea how far she’d walked, blindly, through the park. Ashmont’s words had pained her, deeply, even though she knew those weren’t his precise words. The letter sounded generally like him, though, and she’d wanted to run. Not that she had any idea where to run to. Not that she was at all clear about what she wanted to run from or saw, really, any point to running. If only she hadn’t run in the first place.

She couldn’t think about that now. The darkness was deepening while the thunder rolled toward them. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash.

She didn’t argue when Ripley turned the chair in the direction of the fishing house.

Ripley told her to run ahead, and he’d follow with the chair, but she wouldn’t cooperate. If she left him to push the chair on his own, he would put too much weight on his bad foot, she said.

Luckily they had only a short distance to go. The fishing house had stood near the turn in the river for a hundred fifty years. At any rate, he hoped it still stood.

The storm steadily bore down on them, and as they reached the bend, lightning blasted the sky. Thunder followed rather too close in its wake. Raindrops plopped on the pathway, on the chair, on their heads.

He pushed the chair faster, ignoring the jolts up his leg when his right foot landed hard on an unexpected lump in the pathway. The grounds hereabouts needed attention, he thought, then pushed the thought aside for another time.

The landscape lay in deepening shadow. Thunder rolled while lightning flashed among the clouds.

As soon as they turned the bend, the house came into view.

In most people’s opinion, it wasn’t much of a fishing house. It looked nothing like the grand, multichambered and multistoried Classical, Gothic, and Chinese fishing temples of so many other great estates. This was merely a square stone structure, with a few temple-like architectural touches. An ancestor had built it sometime in the late 1600s. Unenlarged and unembellished since, it boasted a single room lit by windows on all four sides. A set of three shallow steps led to a narrow portico that sheltered the double doors.

As they hurried toward it, a blast of lightning lit the building. A moment later, thunder rolled over them.

Ripley left the chair at the bottom of the stairs and limped up the steps behind Olympia. As they reached the portico, the rain picked up its pace. He pulled the door handles. The doors didn’t budge. Locked. Of course they would be.

“Never mind,” she said. “We’re sheltered from the worst of it, and very likely it’ll pass through quickly.”

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; “Don’t think so,” he said, glancing about him. “Doesn’t look like that kind of storm. This one looks like it means to stay.”

He left her and began limping round the side of the house, testing windows.

“Ripley!”

At the back, he found one with a broken latch.

“Found a way in,” he called back. “Stay where you are.”

He wrestled the window open, then went back to get the chair.

“You’re going to stand on the chair while I hold it, and climb in through the window and unlock the door from the inside,” he said.

He could think of a score of other women who’d look at him as though he was mad.

Olympia nodded.

She helped push the chair into place, and he let her, though he didn’t need help. When he took hold of it, keeping it steady, she quickly climbed onto it then through the window in a flurry of skirts and petticoats and writhing limbs and a whirl of familiar scent. Though she wore his aunt’s clothes, the scent he caught was of Olympia’s skin and hair.

He remembered her climbing over the wall at the back of Newland House’s garden. He remembered her dress and petticoats swirling about his face . . .

He shook off the recollection and moved back to the door and waited. And waited. The great drops of rain fell faster. Wind gusted.

“Do you mean to open the door?” he called. “Or were you wanting me to beat back the lightning with the chair?”

“It’s dark,” she called back. “I can’t find the—oh, here it is.”

The door opened, and Ripley dashed in.

“The chair,” she said. “You left it—”

“Bother the chair.” He looked about him. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw the tinderbox on the mantel, alongside the simple utensils the family always kept here: cooking pots, a few plates and cups, a pitcher and bowl. The table held a small basket of table linens. Wood had been stacked near the fireplace.

He made a fire. It gave him something to do while he tried to decide what to do. Or, more important, what to say.