Page 58 of A Virgin for the Duke of Thorns

Her words seemed to have set the young ladies and gentlemen in a frenzy as excited chatter broke out all over the breakfast room.

“To our talented young gentlemen—the best of luck to you today, and may your efforts bring you victory!”

* * *

By the end of breakfast, Colin was thoroughly convinced that his grandmother had engineered this damned house party to torment him.

Of course, she knows very well how much I despise hunting!

And yet, he, like every other young gentleman in attendance, had to slung a rifle over his shoulder, although he exhibited far less enthusiasm than the rest.

“Your Gr—Colin?”

He turned around gingerly to find the very object of all his tortuous desires standing before him in a sage green dress. Her long, dark hair had been swept up into a neat chignon underneath a bonnet with ribbons that matched her dress. Her eyes were wide, and her cheeks were slightly flushed as she gazed at him.

If she had been any more beautiful, he feared that his very heart would give out in his chest, and he would expire right where he stood.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

She frowned at his tone. “I was on my way to join the others when I saw you.”

She saw him because he was clearly lagging behind all the other gentlemen. While the rest happily jumped into the woods, eager to shoot everything that moved, he saw the gaping maw of the greenery and shuddered. He smelled the fresh blood and death, and all enthusiasm left him.

“You should be with the other ladies,” he bit back, instantly regretting the harshness of his tone. After all, it was not Alice who deserved his ire but his grandmother for organizing a game that he was certainly going to lose.

Alice simply tilted her head a little to the side like a curious sparrow. “You… you do not quite like hunting, do you?”

Damn her and her perceptive, little soul!

“Why would you say that?” He shrugged as casually as he could manage. He slung the rifle and aimed in the distance. “My father had taught me how to hunt on these very grounds.”

How could he forget the day his father had handed him a rifle and took him out into the woods? He had hated every second of it, and now it was imprinted in his mind, an indelible memory that he would most rather forget.

“Focus, Colin,” his father had instructed him, his tone stern and implacable as always.

He had missed his first shot, and the lithe doe had bounded away in graceful leaps. As a young boy, he could not admit to his sire that he was relieved to see the animal get away from them unharmed.

“To be able to hunt successfully, you have to know your prey’s weakness,” the Duke had told him in a cold and callous voice. “Everything has its weakness—remember that.”

And he did.

Only for it to send shivers down his spine as he looked at the woman standing before him. In his mind, he could see that young doe from so many years ago.

He was the hunter, and she was his prey. The little lamb to his Wolf.

And he had exploited every weakness he had perceived in her. It was he who blackmailed her into this arrangement, threatening her with ruination and scandal if she did not agree to his wishes.

“That does not mean you like it,” she said simply. “I saw the late Duke, you know.”

She fell into step with him, and he was made keenly aware of the light fragrance that emanated from her. It was so different from the fresh scent of the woods around him, and yet it was just as vibrantly alive, just like Alice herself. He felt it wrap around him like the tendrils of a vine, capturing his senses until he could think of very little else besides her.

“I saw his portrait in the hallway,” she explained. “He looked like someone who always got what he wanted, whatever the consequences.”

Whatever the consequences.

Colin could not help but smile bitterly at her words. Unknowingly, she had managed to capture his father’s character without even having spoken to the man. Was the late Duke of Blackthorn really that imposing even in his portrait?

He should know because the man’s specter haunted him to this very day.

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