Page 58 of The Wolf Duke's Wife
Christine laughed. “No, except…”
Suddenly, she was close again, her fragrance filling his head. He felt her breasts press against his chest and her hands gently twining through his hair. Then she was gone, like a dream.
“Some grass was clinging to your hair. Now, you look presentable.”
Tristan licked his lips, discomfited by the rush of emotion that had flooded him at her sudden and unexpected proximity. It was an unwelcome presage of weakness to come. The scouts of attachment, riding out ahead of the main army. His defenses needed to be stronger.
“Shall we continue? If we must play, I would win.”
He made his voice gruff with the ease of long experience. The same gruffness that had long ago sent a vicar of Duxworth running from his front door. That had sliced off attempted small talk with the effectiveness of a falling axe.
“I think we should. There are clouds gathering. I think we might be in for a spot of rain,” Christine said.
“Wonderful.”
She resumed her guidance, and they progressed through devious obstacles with their previous smoothness. He wondered at her loss of focus earlier. It had come after he had shared with her his love of drawing.
I surprised her. She judged me nothing more than an anti-social brute with no interior life of my own. Just a scowl, a title, and an estate. I wonder if it pleased her.
The first fat drop of rain touched him as they cleared the obstacles.
“The trees are closer than the house,” Christine said.
A second, third, and fourth made their appearance and then, as though a celestial bucket had been upended, the downpour began in earnest. Tristan pivoted to Christine’s voice and scooped her into his arms.
She gave a shriek but held on as he ran in the direction she had previously orientated him to. The direction of the trees. He slowed at the feel of the first whip-thin branch against his shins, the fronds of a fern, and the wetness of long grass.
The deluge seemed to ease, though its sound on the canopy was cacophonous.
“Am I allowed to remove the blindfold now?” he asked.
“I think the game is suspended. I can see most others running for the house.”
“We are the brave ones,” Tristan said.
The blindfold was removed for him, and he blinked against the muted, gray light of the rainstorm. Christine held the blindfold, and he held her.
Eighteen
The outer fringes of the woodland couldn’t help but yield to the ferocity of the rainstorm. It didn’t take long for the drops that permeated the thin canopy to become irritating.
“This was probably a foolish idea,” Christine said, wiping rain from her face.
“You want to go back to Greystone?”
“I should, they will be drying themselves before fires and warming their insides with tea and buttered toast.”
“And burning each other’s ears with their gossip. No, thank you. I would rather be wet.”
Christine laughed. “I suppose that at the very least, I can walk.”
“No,” Tristan said, immediately, “your shoes are entirely unsuitable for woodland walking. They’re little better than slippers.”
Christine’s slippered foot poked out beneath the hem of her skirt, and she waggled it.
“They are pumps rather than shoes. Silk and very thin leather soles. Very pretty though. I have never had a pair so pretty.”
He slung one arm behind her back, the other beneath her knees, the warm curves of muscle as steady and strong as any oak. “Be careful, or I might think I am carrying Lady Martha or one of her ilk.”
