Read Online Scandal's Reward by Jean R. Ewing - Free Book Online Page B

the shade of the trees thoroughly stuck to the saddle. I’ve done it often enough before, but it’s not the most pleasant way to ride.”
    “What?” she said without thinking. “Do you make a habit of rescuing women from pools?”
    For a moment he seemed stunned into silence, but then he laughed.
    “I was referring, dear Kate, only to the times that I’ve ridden soaked to the skin by the rain. A soldier cannot choose the weather in which he takes out his horse.” His voice changed only imperceptibly. “The only other time that I had a woman to rescue from a pool, I apparently botched it.”
    The color flamed to her face. If she could have taken back her question, she would have done so a hundred times over. Poor Millicent Trumble had drowned not half a mile downstream from this very grotto. However guilty Dagonet might be, she hadn’t meant to deliberately refer to the old tragedy.
    He swept her a formal bow and shrugged. “I can no more change the past than you, Miss Hunter, but my sins are of a different order entirely, aren’t they? I would escort you to the house if I were able, but it would only compound the problem for both of us. May I bid you good-day?”
    He leapt lightly up onto the rocks that shaded the grotto. Just before he disappeared into the woods, he stopped and broke off a briar rose.
    Turning it in his fingers, he said lightly, “The single rose, dear Kate. Would you take it, I wonder, were I to give it to you?”
    He began once again to sing the words of the old song.
    “You’re impossible, sir!” she shouted, but he had left, the rose in his hand.
    * * * *
    Catherine hurried back to Lion Court wrapped in her light shawl without meeting a soul. She felt miserable. She bathed, washed her hair, and changed her dress with her head spinning. Dagonet obviously meant to haunt the house until he could speak with Mary about her sister’s death. What did he want to find out? He was known to be responsible for the girl’s drowning and he seemed to accept the blame without question. What could he hope to discover that could make any difference?
    Well, it was none of her business and she would put him out of her mind.
    Yet she was not to be allowed to forget about Devil Dagonet for very long.
    Gravel crunched as the carriage pulled up in the drive. Catherine ran downstairs and found the family in the drawing room. Sir George was stomping up and down, his face suffused with indignation.
    “. . . and Major Cartwright had the damned impertinence to ask me about Dagonet,” he said. “What do you think of that, Mama?”
    “Oh, dear! I thought you were talking about horses . . .”
    “The story is all over the village and it makes me look a dashed fool. Why the deuce can’t you keep your mouth shut, Charlotte?”
    Charlotte Clay pursed her lips. “Well, I think the neighbors have the right to be warned that Devil Dagonet is in the country, George. Mr. Clay believed in plain speaking and I follow his example. I gave only the broadest outlines of what happened, after all, but if our cousin acts the common highwayman, he must expect his name to be dragged through the mud.”
    “Oh, not a highwayman, surely?” Lady Montagu said tentatively. “We were in the drawing room when Dagonet came in and took the jewels. I don’t think we should indulge in calumny.”
    “Calumny! He’s been a damned thief since he was a boy, Mama! Good Lord, don’t you recall how he tore out all my trap lines and released the rabbits out of the nooses? Father tied him to the post in the barn and beat him with the horsewhip, but he wouldn’t stop it.”
    “Your trap lines were disgusting, George,” Charlotte said. “A low poacher’s trick. Why Papa should indulge you in something so unsporting, I cannot conceive. Mr. Clay would not have approved, I’m sure.”
    “I didn’t set them where you or Mama could have found them. Anyway, it was just a boy’s game. Dagonet had no right to interfere.”
    Lady Montagu seemed