Blighted idiot, he cursed himself as he pumped arms and legs, scrambling over the furrowed field. Corkbrained fool. What kind of imbecile entered a pasture at twilight and shouted “Dinner” at the top of his lungs?

One who hadn’t left London in a decade, that’s who.

“I hate the country,” he muttered as he ran. “I hate it. I bloody damned well hate it.”

In his hurry, he’d chosen a different route of escape than the way he’d entered the field. Rather than reaching a simple wooden stile, he ran smack up against a hedgerow. A thorny hedgerow.

“Hate it,” he said, pushing his way through the bramble and twigs. “Loathsome, miserable, reeking, wholesome farmland. Feh.”

He emerged on the other side of the hedge to find himself once again in the Summerfield gardens—the pretty bit, this time. He was scraped, but mercifully untrampled. He stood staring at the hedgerow a moment, picking bits of hawthorn from his clothing and cursing country life.

Then something odd caught his attention. A light smack on the head.

He wheeled around, batting blindly with a hand.

The next smack caught him across the face. A red burst of pain stung his already abraded cheek.

Good Lord, what was this? The Seven Plagues of Colin Sandhurst, squeezed into the space of one hour?

He raised his hands in defense, dodging the repeated blows.

“You villain,” a female voice accused. Smack. “You deceitful cur.”

Colin lowered his hands to get a proper look at his attacker. It was the middle Highwood sister. The dark-haired one. Miriam, was it? Melissa?

Whoever she was, she was hitting him. Repeatedly. With a glove.

“What on earth are you doing?” He dodged another smack, moving deeper into the gardens. He stumbled over a clump of daisies and narrowly missed a collision with a rosebush.

She chased him, still swinging away. “I want a duel.”

“A duel?”

“I know all about you and Mrs. Lange, you . . . you rutting . . .” Apparently lacking either the imagination or the bravery to complete the insult, she moved on. “I never liked you, I hope you know. I’ve always known you for a worthless bounder, but now my mother and sisters will suffer the pain of the revelation. You’ll have disappointed their hopes.”

Ah. So that’s what this was about. He was being made to answer for . . . for what, precisely? Flirting?

“Diana has no father or brothers to defend her honor. The duty falls to me.” She slapped him across the face again. “Name your seconds.”

“Good God. Will you stop with the glove?” He ripped the thing from her hand and tossed it into the thorny rosebushes. “I’m not going to accept your challenge. There will be no duel.”

“Why not? Because I’m a woman?”

“No, because I’ve seen the way you spinsters handle a pistol. You’d shoot me dead where I stood.” Colin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Listen, calm down. I haven’t touched your sister. Not in any improper way.”

“Perhaps you haven’t touched her improperly, but you’ve improperly led her on.”

“Led her on? Perhaps I danced and flirted with her a bit, but I’ve flirted with every young lady in this village.”

“Not every young lady.”

He paused, stunned. As he stared at her, he felt a grin nudging his cheeks. “So you’re jealous.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she replied, much too quickly to be credible.

“You are.” He wagged a finger at her, no longer on the retreat. “You’re jealous. I’ve flirted with every young lady in the village but you, and you’re envious.”

“I’m not envious, I just . . .” She made a gesture of frustration. “I just want to hurt you. The way you hurt my sister.”

The way he’d hurt her, she meant. If Diana Highwood had suffered one moment of pain on his account, Colin would swallow a Chinese dazzler. But this one . . . she was hurt.

Well, exactly how did she expect him to flirt with her? Lines like “river of silk” and “sparkling diamonds” would never work on a woman like this. She was too clever by half. Moreover, such comparisons would be wildly inaccurate. Her hair was nothing like silk, and her dark eyes bore no resemblance to diamonds.

Cooled volcanic glass, perhaps.

“Listen,” he said in a placating tone. “It’s not like that, Melinda. You are a tolerably pretty girl.”

“Tolerably.” She rolled her eyes and made a dismissive noise. “Tolerably pretty. What kind of compliment is that? And my name’s not Melinda.”

“No, not tolerably pretty,” he said, tilting his head for a better look. “Genuinely so. If only you’d . . .”

“Don’t say it. Everyone says it.”

“Everyone says what?”

She spoke in a low, mimicking tone. “ ‘If only you’d remove your spectacles, you’d be lovely.’ ”

“I wasn’t going to stay that,” he lied. “Why would I say that? What a perfectly stupid thing to say.”

“I know you’re lying. You dissemble as easily as you breathe. But my feelings aren’t at issue here. This is about your cruel misuse of Diana.”

“I assure you, I’ve not come close to using your sister, cruelly or otherwise. I apologized for all that business at the tea shop.”

“Oh yes. You apologized quite prettily. You made them believe you were decent. That you cared. And then you took up with a married woman.”

Colin rubbed the back of his neck. He really didn’t have time for this. He had fireworks to set, a cannon to mount, and a lamb to catch. “I don’t know what you hope to gain by pursuing this conversation. I tell you now, I won’t offer marriage. Not to your sister, not to anyone.”

“Hmph. I’d never allow you to marry her.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I want justice! I want you to be responsible for your actions, instead of always weaseling out of them with a few pretty words.”

Do you see? Colin wanted to say. This is why I avoid you. It was as if those spectacles gave her the power to see straight through him.

“You’re starting to sound like my cousin,” he said. “I do hope you’re not planning to give me the same treatment you gave him.”

She stared at him a moment. “What an excellent idea.” With a swift, swooping motion of her arm, she drew back her reticule and let it fly.

Colin flinched just in time to take the blow on his shoulder, rather than his crown. Still, the cinched velvet purse landed with surprising force. Pain exploded through his shoulder. “What the devil is in that thing? Rocks?”

“What else?”

What else, indeed. How could he have forgotten her ridiculous obsession with geology? Vile harpy. “Listen, Marissa . . .”

“It’s Minerva.” She raised her hand to swing the rock-filled reticule again.

This time, he was ready. In a lightning-quick motion, Colin caught her wrist. He spun her around and pulled her to him. Her spine pressed flush against his chest, and he cinched his arm around her middle.

Her spectacles slipped from her face and tumbled to the grass.

She wrestled his grip. “Let me go.”

“Not just yet. You’ll step on them, if you don’t stop struggling.”

He wasn’t sure he truly wanted her to stop struggling. From where he was standing, poised to look straight down her bodice, all that wrestling did wonderful things for her breasts. No cool, perfect alabaster to be found here. Just warm, womanly skin. And as enticing as she looked, she felt even better. So angry and alive.

“Hush.” He pressed his lips close to her ear. Her hair smelled of jasmine. The scent swirled through his head, muddling his thoughts. “Be calm,” he told her.

Be calm, he told himself.

“I don’t want to be calm. I want a duel.” She wriggled in his arms, and desire pulsed through him, as fierce as it was appalling. “I demand satisfaction.”

Yes, he thought. This was a woman who would demand satisfaction. In life, in love. In bed. She would demand honesty and commitment and fidelity, and all manner of things he was unwilling to give.

Which was just the excuse he needed to let her go.

“Don’t move, or you’ll crush them.” He bent to retrieve her wire-rimmed spectacles from where they’d landed in a clump of ivy. After brushing them clean of dirt and moss, he held them up to the moonlight to inspect them for scratches.

“They aren’t broken, are they?”

“No.”

She made a lunging grab for the spectacles, but he held them back. She stumbled, pitching forward to collide with his chest. As she looked up at him, blinking hard in her attempt to see clear, her lashes fluttered like thick, plumed fans. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

Good God. For a buttoned-up bluestocking, she had damned sultry lips. Luscious, plump, and a deeper red at the edges. Like two slices of a ripe, sweet plum. His mouth watered.

She leaned into him, cheeks flushed. As if she wanted his kiss. More than that. As if she wanted him. Every incorrigible, rakish, broken part.

That couldn’t be right.

“You know, they have a point,” he said. “You do look different without your spectacles.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. You look squinty. And confused.” He fitted the spectacles back on the bridge of her nose, hooking the rims over her ears. Then he put a finger under her chin, tilting her face for his appraisal. “There, that’s some improvement.”

She blinked at him through the discs of glass, her gaze sharpening to that familiar, piercing ray of mistrust. “You are a horrid man. I despise you.”

“Rightly so, pet.” And just because he knew it would vex her, he touched a fingertip to her nose. “Now you’re seeing clear.”

Twenty-five

Bram stared at the letter in his grip. This folded square of paper gave him back his command. For months now, this had been all he’d wanted. He’d worked tirelessly to recover his strength, pursued this one goal with single-minded determination. He couldn’t have dreamed anything would make him happier than the very scrap of parchment he now held.

He wanted to throw it in the fire.

And then toss Sir Lewis Finch after it.

“I can’t believe this. Oh my God.” Susanna sobbed into her hand, and then ran from the hall before Bram had any chance to stop her.

“Susanna, wait.” He started in pursuit.

Sir Lewis flung an arm in front of his chest, stopping him cold. “Let her be. She gets this way. All women do. I’ve found she always sorts these things out on her own, in time. If only you let her be.”

Bram stared at the man, fuming. “Oh really. The same way you let her be, when she was distraught after her mother’s death? Sending her to that ghastly torture in Norfolk?” With a curled finger, he thwacked the envelope containing his new orders. “How long have you had this, Sir Lewis? Days now? Weeks? Since before I even arrived in Spindle Cove, perhaps? Obviously, there wasn’t any true need for a field review. Did the Duke of Tunbridge really ask you to muster a militia here, or was that a lie, too? I always knew you were a brilliant inventor, but perhaps you ought to try your hand at espionage.”

The older man bristled. “I am a patriot, you ungrateful whelp. Tomorrow, before an audience of dukes and generals, I will introduce the weapon that could save many of your soldiers’ lives. And what do you care if I engaged in some harmless exaggeration? You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?”

“You mean this?” Bram shook the envelope at him. He lowered his voice to a growl. “This piece of paper has exactly one virtue right now. One quality that keeps me from crushing it under my heel.”