A Duke in the Night(31)

Lady Tabitha pulled her shawl a little tighter around her shoulders against the breeze. “Welcome, Your Grace. My brother sent word that you would be staying up at the dower house, evaluating the…livestock.” Her eyes slid past August to the group of students out on the plain, and August had the uncomfortable feeling that she might be laughing at him again.

“The livestock and the land,” August repeated firmly. “I had just started out when I came across Miss Hayward and her students. I did not wish to be a distraction.” Why was he explaining himself? “I do hope I haven’t put you out of your residence,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the dower house and deliberately changing the subject. “I didn’t think to—”

Lady Theodosia waved a plump hand to cut him off. “Tabby and I haven’t put ourselves out to pasture quite yet,” she said with a wry chuckle. “My sister and I live in the main house. Where the action is.”

“The action?”

“The young ladies of Miss Hayward’s school. We’re so pleased to have her company, and that of her students, every summer.”

“Special woman, Miss Hayward is,” Lady Tabitha interjected.

“She is. Makes an old soul feel young again.” Theodosia beamed. “And here they come now.” She was once again looking over August’s shoulder.

August turned to see that Miss Hayward and her students were indeed returning to Avondale. She was talking animatedly to one of the girls, her hands as expressive as her features. Her face was pink from her walk or the breeze or both, and her hair had again lost its battle with its curl and the wind. The urge to yank the last few pins from the back of it and watch it unfurl down her back was almost overwhelming.

August had a sudden vision of her sitting on the edge of those cliffs, only this time it was he who was with her. This time it was he who lay back in the grass, drawing her down with him. Baring her until she wore nothing but sunlight and that glorious curtain of fire that tumbled over her shoulders—

“Miss Hayward, good afternoon,” Lady Tabitha chirped.

August jerked, trying to haul his thoughts out of the dissolute depths where they had slid.

“Good afternoon, Tabby, Theo,” Miss Hayward replied, and some of the laughter in her expression disappeared as her gaze settled on him. “Your Grace.”

“Good afternoon,” he managed.

Miss Hayward turned back to her students. “Head on up to the house, girls,” she instructed. “I’ll meet you in the library very shortly.”

August had already braced himself for the irritation he would no doubt find in his sister’s expression. But instead she was deep in conversation with a pretty brunette with an American accent and merely gave him a distracted nod as she passed.

Huh.

“How was your walk, ladies?” Miss Hayward asked.

“Oooh, it was lovely, dearie.” Lady Tabitha beamed. “We found three fossilized urchins and a lovely bivalve specimen on the lower beach. Oh, and we found His Grace. Though he was a little higher up.” She poked the end of her walking stick in his direction, which made August suspect that he measured up rather poorly to a fine urchin specimen.

Miss Hayward once again turned her attention to August, and he found himself the object of another one of her indecipherable stares. Her eyes skipped down his body, lingering on the bits of grass still stubbornly clinging to the knees of his breeches. He saw her lips thin slightly and a faint crease mar her forehead. But as always, good manners won out, and her expression flattened into one of pleasant neutrality. “You’re up and about early, Your Grace.”

Early? August scoffed. “It’s midafternoon, Miss Hayward. I’ve never much been one for lying abed when there is work to be done.”

He saw her brows rise slightly, and she might have flushed, though it was difficult to tell beneath her wind-reddened cheeks. “How commendable,” she said in a way that suggested his particular work this afternoon was anything but.

August was aware of the sisters’ gaze upon them. “Can you join us for a cup of tea, Your Grace?” Lady Theo asked. “Miss Hayward will be busy with her students, of course, but we’d love the company.”

“Er, thank you, but no. I have a great deal to get done today. Perhaps another time.” He’d been the object of their entertainment for too long already, and he had no intention of prolonging it. Though he had no one but himself to blame.

“Of course.” Lady Tabitha shrugged slightly and linked her arm through her sister’s. “Come along, then, Theo. Let us not stand in the way of…important work.”

August inwardly grimaced.

“I’ll be right in,” Miss Hayward said. “I just need a quick word with His Grace.”

The sisters nodded and cheerfully headed off in the direction of the house, moving at a surprisingly swift clip.

“They walk the beach every day,” Miss Hayward said.

He frowned at her words. The beach? “But that has to be two hundred feet down.”

“And two hundred feet back up.”

“Why?” August was aghast.

“They like to collect fossils. And they tell me the exercise is good for their constitutions.” She stared at him with that unreadable expression he despised. “Is that what you were doing this afternoon, Your Grace? Exercising?”