Chapter Seventeen

      Turning to stamp out again and ride as far as a fresh horse could carry him this late in the day, Luke stumbled over the doorstep, then righted himself like a drunkard. Just as well he did, considering Chloe rushed into the yard to confront him with her cap sadly awry and her auburn locks tumbling from under it. She would have tripped over him if he had tumbled on to the cobbles.

      ‘Don’t you dare say that, then walk away from me, you lubberly great coward,’ she spat at him. ‘How dare you come home, looking like something the dog didn’t want, then snap and rage at the man who saved my daughter from the very men you were supposed to be protecting her from?’

      ‘I suppose he has some excuse for being here.’

      ‘Yes, and I have the good manners to thank him for it, whoever he might be. You challenged him for no good reason that I can see.’

      ‘If you can’t see why I would, then I’ll leave you to your touching family reunion. The man is clearly everyone’s hero but mine and you have no need of me.’

      ‘You’re jealous, aren’t you?’ she asked and gave him a smug smile that made him squirm, but at least temper made him face her challenge with one of his own.

      ‘Of course I’m not, the man’s obviously an idiot.’

      ‘How can even you say so, let alone believe it? My brother hatched a wild plan to abduct Verity, to keep me quiet about his past sins until his wedding was over and the poor girl bedded so it could not be annulled. Captain Revereux foiled it, then rode here with Verity up behind him and a bullet lodged in his arm, until Josiah recovered consciousness after being knocked out and he and Mr Peters rode to the rescue a little too late to be a great deal of use.’

      ‘Then he is clearly your hero and I have nothing to do or say here.’

      ‘And you’re going to turn and walk away in a fit of pique? Go out of my life for another ten years...’ Words failed her for a moment. ‘How could you, you ridiculous, thick-headed, bad-tempered great idiot? You wrote me all those wonderful letters; full of love and hope, and let me dream of you loving me back. Now you’re going to throw it all away because you’re tired and you’ve lost your temper? Oh, go away then, you stupid great oaf. How could I ever think I loved you? I must be an even bigger fool than you are.’

      He stood reeling when she turned on her heel with a huff of impatience and prepared to storm off and leave him there gaping after her like a stranded codfish.

      ‘No, you don’t,’ he barked as he snapped out of his shocked stupor and grabbed her by the waist to physically stop her walking away from him. ‘You’re not going anywhere until you’ve explained yourself,’ he told her gruffly.

      ‘I’m not saying anything,’ she informed him and tossed her head so the awful cap finally fell off and the sight of her glorious copper-gold locks down her back like hot silk nearly mazed him into slackening his grip and letting her go.

      ‘Good,’ he said huskily and snatched a hungry, explicit kiss square on her mouth at the instant she opened it to hurl some new insult at him.

      She resisted angrily and a rational, gentlemanly part of him stood aside and tutted as the rest of him deepened the kiss. His grip on her softened, but he had to persuade her to need him back before he dared raise his head and admit she was right and he was a damned fool to even dream of walking away from her and this.

      His inner gentleman was about to win the battle and let her go if this wasn’t what she wanted desperately as well when she wriggled insistently against him. His heart in his boots, he waited for her to wrench out of his arms, then rage at him and demand he never came within a hundred miles of her ever again. Instead she flung her arms about his neck and held on to him as if she never intended to let him go. Fierce joy sang in his heart even as the appalling weariness of his forced ride threatened to wash over him and send him into a very unmanly faint.

      ‘I missed you so much,’ she informed him tearfully as she stood on tiptoes, meeting his tired eyes with a blaze of passion in her own. ‘I love you, Luke Winterley, and don’t you dare walk away,’ she threatened fiercely. ‘If you do, I’ll walk in the opposite direction and you’ll have to chase me, because I am a Thessaly and I do have some pride,’ she told him; all they could be together in her mesmerising gaze.

      ‘Oh, my Chloe, whatever would I do without you?’ He breathed and hardly dared blink unless he was imagining the feel and fact of her against him and the wondrous promise she’d just made, in public, in front of rather a lot of witnesses as half his staff were standing in the kitchen doorway grinning like idiots.

      ‘I feel the same about you, you great unshaven, smelly brute of a man,’ she murmured, then kissed him as if he was her perfect pattern of a gentleman.

      ‘It might be best if you came back in, Lord Farenze, ma’am,’ one of the men Peters had sent to protect Verity interrupted them from the back of the crowd. ‘Yon Captain Rever—whoever you said he was—has fainted and the cook’s beating the kitchen maid with a soup ladle.’

      ‘Oh the romance of it all,’ Luke whispered against Chloe’s lips as he forced himself to stop kissing the love of his life and met her laughing eyes instead. ‘Life seems to await us in all its rich variety, my darling. Don’t forget me whilst you deal with it in your usual inimitable fashion.’

      ‘As if I could, my scruffy, disreputable lord,’ she whispered, ‘now let me go before I kick you in the shins as I should have done the instant you laid disrespectful hands on me, you great barbarian.’

      ‘Virago,’ he replied shakily.

      Scandalously hand-locked, they went back into the once spotless and beautifully ordered kitchen and Chloe snapped a series of concise orders. Within minutes the hysterical kitchen maid had been sent to lie down in a darkened attic, Cook was sipping tea in her chair by the fire and looking sheepish while the footmen hauled quantities of water onto the hot plates to hasten the bath Luke knew he needed rather badly.

      Eve somehow stopped Verity plucking the feathers out of the head housemaid’s best feather duster to burn to revive the patient. Revereux woke from his faint of his own accord and was now insisting on getting down from his undignified perch