Duchess By Night

“Ouch!” Jem said, and everyone started laughing.

It would be all right, Harriet thought, sitting down with weak knees. All the men were grinning at her. No one’s eyes danced away; no one looked uneasy. Frankly, they all looked envious. She squared her shoulders and accepted a slab of roast beef, hardly cooked, from the footman.

Breakfast passed in a flash. Kitty giggled every time she looked at Harriet and so did Roslyn, who kept giving Harriet slow winks.

Sanders came in, and sat down at Harriet’s side. “Heard about last night,” he said, under cover of the conversation. “We all should have known that Pensickle was uttering rot. Everyone knows about the man’s capabilities in that direction. Jealous, no doubt.”

Harriet murmured something.

“Had a brother with a friend of that persuasion,” Sanders confided.

Harriet really wished he wouldn’t.

But Sanders was done with that topic and onto another. “When I was a youngster, I would have loved to get up to the sort of high jinks you engaged in last night.” He eyed Kitty in a toothy sort of way. “Married too young, that’s what happened to me.”

He thumped Harriet on the back so suddenly that she choked on a mouthful of beef. “You’re doing it the right way, Cope. Spread your wild oats, and spread ’em wide, I say.”

“Thank you, sir,” Harriet said.

It was a relief to escape. By the time she’d negotiated all the winks and thumps from men, and all the giggles and veiled invitations from women, she was so tired that she felt like going back to bed.

Instead she pulled on her riding breeches and trailed outdoors to the stable. The day had started clear but was beginning to look gray again, with a hint of snow.

“We’re actually working today,” Jem said, when she walked in. Nick was waiting for her, holding her horse. “We’re going out to check the north stables and make sure all’s snug and tight. My stable master thinks we may need to buy some grain to make it through the winter.”

Harriet swung up on the saddle with a little puff. She was a much better rider now, and she didn’t think that the tender ache in her thighs could be put down to riding astride.

At least, not riding a horse.

The thought made her smile and she looked up to find Jem’s eyes on her. He abruptly wheeled his horse and left the stable. She followed, wincing as the bitter air hit her face.

He was waiting and leaned over, took her mouth in a hard kiss. “Don’t ever smile like that if there is anyone else in the room.”

Harriet’s heart sang. He would never let her go.

“Jem—” she said, but he was gone, and with a little shout she let her mare leap after him. She was a good rider now, able to go around turns at a gallop, although native common sense led her to slow her horse. Jem simply clung to the side of his mount and went faster.

Snow was in the air, the smell of it and the taste of it on the wind.

Harriet was just starting to get tired when a large barn loomed into view to the right. Jem immediately slowed his horse and picked his way across the frozen field. Then he jumped off and led his horse over to a small door in the side, not the huge door that accommodated the hay wagons.

“Come on, Harry,” he shouted over his shoulder.

Harriet clambered down rather painfully. That extra bit of gymnastics in the middle of the night—though it was wondrously fun—had taken its toll.

She led her horse into the warmth, out of the wind. Stacks of golden hay towered over their heads, winding toward the wooden loft far above.

“This is the largest barn I’ve ever seen,” Harriet said, awestruck.

“Your husband’s storage barn isn’t so large?” Jem asked. There was just a touch of satisfaction in his voice that made her smile. If she didn’t like Sally, Jem didn’t seem to like Benjamin either. Though she hadn’t told Jem anything much about Benjamin.

Not that it mattered, not with the true, clear emotion that strung between them. She’d tell him when the moment felt right. Jem tied up the horses, then took her hand and they wound their way through a narrow pathway in the straw.

“I just have to check the grain,” he said.

“Where is it?”

“Back here, in the lofts. We have a terrible mouse problem.”

“Perhaps rats. You were so lucky with Eugenia’s bite,” Harriet said with a shudder. “By yesterday afternoon I could hardly see the punctures at all.”

“The shepherd brings his ratters to the barn once a week,” Jem said. “Ironic, isn’t it? I take excellent care of my barn, but I let my own child be bitten.”

Harriet’s fingers tightened, warm, around his. “It was an accident.”

“She seems fine. Did she show you what happened to the castle?”

Harriet laughed. “Trust Eugenia to turn a disaster into a triumph.” A ham-handed footman had dropped a log on one side of her paper castle, crushing it. So Eugenia promptly declared the castle a ruin, and said the rats had won. “Last night she was busily cutting out baby rats.”

“I saw them,” Jem said. “They looked like little puddings with tails, but I didn’t tell her that. Here’s the grain.” He wrenched open the wooden top and they stared down into a huge bin. “I’ll tell him to buy a bushel or two,” Jem decided.

Harriet reached out a hand and let the smooth kernels sort through her fingers. “It smells so good.”

“Not as good as you do.”

He was looking at her again with longing in his eyes.

“Do you suppose this will ever go away?” she asked, hearing hunger in her own voice.

“I doubt it. But why worry? We’re having so much pleasure at this moment.”

He pulled off her greatcoat and ran a hand under her shirt, only to be frustrated by her bandaged chest. So his hand started to roam downwards instead.

At first they just stood there, leaning against the rail, kissing until they were both panting a little, until Jem’s heart was pounding under Harriet’s hand.

“If only they could see us now,” he said, amusement in his voice. “I’m afraid no amount of fibs from Kitty would help.”

But Harriet wasn’t interested in imagining what they looked like together. She wound her fingers through his and tugged. “Let’s lie down,” she said.

“A tussle in the straw like shepherds…I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Straw gives me hives. I itch for days,” he said, his eyes on hers. “But I think we could manage standing up, don’t you, Harriet?”

His hand was doing a slow caress of her hip. “Yes,” she whispered. “I think so.”

Two seconds later he was kneeling in front of her, she was holding onto the railing for dear life, and he was—he was—

He pulled back his head. “You know, Harriet,” he said thoughtfully, “I sometimes get the feeling that you would like to scream. May I remind you that there’s no one for miles around this barn?”

Harriet gulped—but then he pulled her toward him again and that wicked tongue of his turned her knees to water.

In the end, she didn’t really scream. It was more like—

“That was a scream,” she heard Jem say. “I knew you had it in you.” But it was her turn, so she slid to her knees before him, and satisfactorily proved that Lord Strange had no control at all when it came to Harriet.