Page 66 of A Deviant Spinster for the Duke
“I found it! Lockie, I found it!” Beatrice’s voice, naming Duncan so… familiarly.
The pair had seemed affable at the luncheon yesterday, though Beatrice had insisted that was not quite the case. Had Valeria missed something? Had Beatrice merely been teasing when she had said she had only been civil for Valeria’s sake? Was there something more between Beatrice and Duncan than she had realized?
Is that why he does not want me to be his bride, because he has already chosen another? A younger, wealthier, prettier, livelier alternative?
“Hurry, Roger,” Valeria urged, hitching up her skirts in a most unladylike fashion, as she broke free of her partner and started running for the apple tree.
She was just passing the cedar where Duncan had given her a minor apoplexy that morning, dropping down to the ground without warning as if he had fallen, when the man himself burst out onto the terrace, a short distance off to her right. Beatrice hurried out behind him, grinning as she grasped his arm, holding onto him as if they already belonged to one another.
Valeria was too busy staring at them to watch where she was putting her hurrying feet, and did not notice the loop of a protruding root until she was already flying through the air.
There was no time to right herself, her hands barely shooting out in time to break her embarrassing fall as she hit the ground.
“Miss Maxwell!” Roger cried out, somewhere behind her.
“Cousin!” Beatrice yelped from the terrace.
Winded and mortified, Valeria considered just staying there, face down in the grass, until the roots grew over her and hid her from view. It would likely take a few decades; that would surely be long enough for everyone to forget what they had seen, and for her to forget her embarrassment.
She felt, rather than heard, the dull thud of frantic footfalls. A moment later, tentative hands were holding her by the arms, attempting to turn her over onto her back.
“Miss Maxwell,” it was Roger’s worried voice, “are you well? Are you hurt? Are you in any pain?”
Groaning, Valeria helped Roger’s valiant efforts by rollingherselfonto her back, hoping he might mistake the red of her cheeks for scrapes and bruises.
“Are you well?” the poor man repeated, frowning down at her, haloed by the sunlight that sliced down through the cedar branches.
Her foot throbbed where it had collided with the tree root but, for now, nothing else seemed to hurt. Truly, she would have preferred to be knocked unconscious, rather than have to deal with the fuss of her own silly accident.
Just then, a shadow blotted out Roger’s haloed shape, moving him aside with a stern, “Fetch ice from the kitchens, Lord Campbell. They brought some in this morning, so there should still be some to use.”
“Ice… Yes, of course. Ice,” Roger mumbled, hesitating.
“At once, man!” Duncan barked. “And ensure it is wrapped in cloth, so it does not burn her skin.”
Jolting in alarm, Roger took off, out of Valeria’s view.
“That was… rude of you,” she wheezed, dazzled by the shafts of sunlight overhead.
Duncan knelt beside her, showing no hesitation whatsoever as he began to remove her shoes. “I was not rude. He was flustered, he needed a distraction, andyouneed ice for this foot, so I gave him something to do.”
“Do not… take my shoes off,” she pleaded quietly. “People will be watching. Allow me my dignity.”
His soft, warm chuckle heated up her cheeks even more. “I need to see what harm has been done. Do not worry about what everyone else is doing. If they want to stare at your feet, that is their problem.”
She did not know whether to laugh or hide her face with her hands, though she did not protest or struggle as Duncanremoved her shoes and set them neatly beside him. And as he slowly rolled down the stocking of her injured foot, she forced her gaze elsewhere, needing a distraction of her own.
She could not, and would not, allow herself to concentrate on the tenderness of his touch or the worried furrow of his brow or the scandal of what he was doing. Were it not an emergency that anyone present could easily understand and forgive, she would have kicked him.
“There is a bruise coming up,” he told her.
She stared up into the cedar branches. “It feels like that is probably true. My foot has gained a heart of its own, and it is beating rather hard.”
“I will have to carry you inside, and a physician should be sent for,” he said, as something high above caught Valeria’s distracted eye.
Tied to the bough, a little higher than the one Duncan had climbed to earlier, was a golden square. It fluttered like a flag as the wind swept through the branches, rustling the needle-like leaves, wafting the earthy, comforting scent of the wood across the grounds.
“The treasure was there all along,” she whispered, struck with a thrill so intense that it washed away the pain in her foot. “You minx, Duncan. It was there all along!”
