her face. She looked completely bemused for a second, dazed and dazzled, and he felt a violent satisfaction to have so thoroughly undermined her defences. Then her expression warmed into anger.
‘I knew you were a rake!’ she said furiously.
‘I am so pleased to have been able to prove you correct,’ Richard replied.
Deborah made a noise of disgust. ‘I could have outrun you had I been riding astride.’
‘Now that,’ Richard said with appreciation, ‘I should have liked to see.’
Deborah made another squawk like an infuriated hen and set the horse to walk along the path out of the wood. It was a narrow track and Richard let her go first. Last autumn’s bracken mingled with the pine needles underfoot and the horses’ hooves made a crunching sound on the undergrowth. Deborah was holding herself upright, ramrod straight. There was indignation in every line of her figure. It made Richard want to laugh. He was willing to bet that half her annoyance stemmed from the fact that she had not been able to help responding to him. And what a response. It scorched him to remember it.
‘You did kiss me back,’ he pointed out mildly.
That gained him a stormy look from those deep blue eyes. ‘I have no recollection of it.’
‘You have a short memory, then. Come here and allow me to remind you.’
Deb quickened her horse’s pace to a trot and burst out of the shade and into the open field again. ‘Is my penalty for losing the wager also to find that I cannot lose your company, Lord Richard?’ she demanded.
Richard smiled. ‘I feel that I should escort you home, Mrs Stratton. One may come across all kinds of rogues if one has the folly to ride out without a groom in attendance.’
Deborah raised her whip and tapped it thoughtfully against the palm of her hand. ‘Perhaps I could deal with them.’
‘I thought that I had already demonstrated that you could not?’
Richard watched in amusement as Deborah’s fist clenched more tightly about the handle of the whip. The leather of her gloves strained across her knuckles. Her intentions were all too clear.
‘I find my need for solitude to be quite overwhelming now, Lord Richard,’ she said coldly. ‘Sufficient to defend it with violence, even.’
Richard laughed. ‘You have no need to go so far, Mrs Stratton. I can take a hint as well as the next man.’
He thought that she almost smiled then, despite herself. ‘All evidence to the contrary, Lord Richard,’ she said. ‘I have always thought you remarkably slow to understand.’
Richard quietened Merlin, who had picked up the tension in the air and was sidestepping nervously.
‘Perhaps you are underestimating me?’ he said softly.
‘I doubt it,’ Deb snapped. ‘My estimation of you has always been that you are a thorough-going rake, and I have seen nothing to contradict that.’
‘I cannot fault your assessment of me,’ Richard said. ‘All that I question is your own response. You are not as indifferent to me as you pretend.’
He saw the colour come into Deborah’s cheeks then and thought it a mixture of indignation and guilt. She did not wish to admit her attraction to him, but because she was of so honest a disposition she was having difficulty with lies and half-truths.
‘You are mistaken,’ she said.
‘I do not think so.’
‘You are conceited.’
‘Possibly. That still does not prove that you dislike me.’
‘I dislike you intensely.’
‘And that does not prove that you are not attracted to me.’ Richard threw up a hand. ‘Come, Mrs Stratton- Deborah-admit the truth.’
‘I did not give you the right to address me by name, my lord,’ Deborah snapped.
‘No, you just gave me a passionate kiss in the woods. I concede that one does not need to be on first-name terms to do such a thing. Indeed, you could make love to me and never need to call me by my name-’
He saw the flash of fury in her eyes, but he did not flinch as the whip came down. It hit the mare’s flank rather than his face, and the creature took off across the fields as though it had the fires of hell snapping at its heels.
This time Richard let Deborah go, watching with admiration as she leaned from the saddle to retrieve her hat from the grass without even slowing the horse’s stride. With a whimsical smile on his face, he turned Merlin in the opposite direction and cantered back towards Kestrel Court along the track that ran beside the edge of the river, the Winter Race. The path was soft and sandy beneath Merlin’s hooves and the horse settled to a tidy pace leaving Richard at liberty to think about Deborah Stratton. He had forced himself to self-control when dealing with her, but she had brought out every primitive and masculine instinct within him. It was damnably difficult to behave like a gentleman when all he wanted to do was carry her off.
Richard sighed, deliberately allowing the tension to drain from his body. It had been an interesting morning. First there had been the mysterious letter addressed to the editor of the Suffolk Chronicle. He wanted to know what that had been about. Then there had been his encounter with Deborah herself, as madcap and passionate and yet as determinedly strait-laced as ever. Their meeting had only strengthened Richard’s determination to pursue his unconventional wooing. And since he could never pretend to be a sober man, and since she thought him a rake, a rake’s courtship was what she would get.
Chapter Two
‘I s there something the matter, Deborah?’ Olivia Marney enquired of her sister when, later that day, they were sitting on the veranda at Midwinter Marney Hall partaking of tea. ‘You have barely sat still for five minutes at a time this afternoon and you seem most agitated. What can have happened to upset you?’
Deborah pumped herself down on the cushioned seat of the wicker chair and toyed with the spray of lilac that she had wrenched from a nearby bush. Its bruised petals gave off a sweet perfume. Deb laid the spray aside with a sigh. No doubt Olivia, who had put years of effort into the gardens at Marney, would be watching her with concern in case she destroyed her life’s work in one fell swoop. The way Deb was feeling, it was a distinct possibility.
‘I am sorry I am such poor company,’ she said. ‘I feel quite liverish today. Maybe it is the sun.’
‘Hmm.’ Olivia poured her sister another cup of tea and pushed the plate with the homemade fruitcake in Deb’s direction. ‘It has never bothered you before. I thought that you went out riding this morning?’
‘I did.’ Deb moodily swallowed a mouthful of tea. It tasted too strong and she wished that she had asked for lemonade instead. She put her cup down and studied the prospect across the lawns to the ornamental shrubbery. It was cool and leafy, and should have been soothing to the spirits. Deb found that it was not.
‘Did you not enjoy yourself?’ Olivia was enquiring. ‘Usually riding puts you in such a pleasant frame of mind.’
Deb frowned. ‘No, I did not enjoy myself. I was plagued by that rogue, Richard Kestrel. He insisted on accompanying me for some of the way. He quite spoiled my outing.’
Olivia’s brow cleared. ‘Oh, I see. It is Lord Richard who has put you in this vile mood! I should have guessed. No one else has his talent for upsetting you.’
‘He kissed me,’ Deb said. ‘Can you believe the audacity of the man?’
There was a clatter as Olivia dropped her silver spoon on the tiled floor. She bent to retrieve it, sitting up with a slight flush on her face. ‘Good gracious, Deb, you should warn me before you make an announcement like that! Nothing half as exciting ever happens at Midwinter Marney Hall.’
Deb was momentarily distracted from her own thoughts. ‘Do you mean that Ross never kisses you, Liv?’
‘Never,’ her sister said. ‘We have been married six years, you know, so it is hardly to be expected. Besides, we quarrel so much that there is never time for anything else. But we were not speaking of my situation, were we, Deborah? Tell me what happened.’
Deb shrugged slightly. She found that she did not wish to confide the whole tale of her encounter with Richard Kestrel, for it might involve some awkward explanations and she was not at all sure of the precise nature of her feelings. Olivia was famously perceptive, and would hit at once on the idea that Deb was in some strange way attracted to the rakish Lord Richard. Indeed, when Richard had tried to seduce Deb the previous year and Deb in a
