She considered his wide-shouldered form, clearly superior to hers in weight and strength, and wondered what he would do if she tried to walk around him.
“Very well,” he said, and then he did something unexpected. He took off his hat.
“It is not the appropriate setting,” he said, “but it appears that we will be here a while.”
He tucked the hat under his arm and met her eyes. “Miss, I apologize for handling our last encounter in an overly high-handed manner. Please do me the honor of staying at Claremont until the party concludes tomorrow.”
It was very quiet on this windless hill in Wiltshire. She heard the sound of her own breath flowing in and out of her lungs, and the slow thump of her heart as she stared back at him, with his hat so formally held under his arm. His breath, like hers, was a white cloud.
No man had ever given her an apology.
Now that she had one, she found she was uncertain what to do with it.
Montgomery’s brow lifted impatiently.
Well. He was a duke, after all, and probably not in the habit of apologizing. Ever.
“Why?” she asked softly. “Why would you invite a woman like me into your home?”
The look he gave her was inscrutable. “I won’t have any woman come to harm on my estate. And our earlier conversation was based on a misunderstanding. It is clear that my brother is quite safe from you.”
She cringed. Had he questioned Peregrin about the nature of their relationship? Or worse, Hattie and Catriona? The questions that would cause—
“No one told me,” he said. He wore a new expression, and it took her a moment to class it as mildly amused.
“That’s reassuring,” she said, not sounding assured at all.
His lips twitched. “It was plain deductive reasoning, logic, if you will.”
“That’s a sound method,” she acknowledged, wondering where in Hades he was going now.
“You made it perfectly clear that you weren’t in the market for a duke,” he said. “It follows that my younger brother would be rather out of the question for you.”
She blinked. Was he trying to . . . jest with her?
His face gave away nothing, and so, carefully, she said: “But wouldn’t that be inductive reasoning, Your Grace?”
He stilled. A glint struck up in the depths of his eyes. “Deductive, I’m sure,” he said smoothly.
Deductive, I’m sure. So the premise that a woman would always prefer a duke over any other man was a natural law to him, like the fact that all men were mortal. His arrogance was truly staggering.
“Of course,” she muttered.
He smiled at that, just with the corners of his eyes, but it still drew her attention to his mouth. It was an intriguing mouth, upon closer inspection. Enticing, even, well-defined and with a notable softness to his bottom lip when he was of a mind to smile. One might call it a sensual mouth, if one were to think about him in such a way, a promise that this reserved duke knew how to put his lips to use on a woman . . . This man and I are going to kiss. The awareness was bright and sudden, a flash at her mind’s horizon, a knowing rather than a thought.
Her heart gave a sharp, confused thud.
She glanced away, then back at him. No, this new Montgomery was still there, with his attractive mouth, with intelligent humor simmering in the depth of his eyes.
She knew then that she would never be able to unsee him again.
She gave her head a shake. “I can’t return with you,” she said, her voice firm, thank God. “I don’t know how to ride.”
He frowned. “Not at all?”
“Not on a sidesaddle.”
Blast. The last thing she wanted was to plant images in his mind of her lifting her skirts and riding astride.
“I see,” he said. He clicked his tongue, and his horse stopped nosing at the snow and trotted over, tagging the spare mount along.
Montgomery took the reins in one fist. “You will ride with me,” he said.
That was not at all the conclusion she had wanted him to reach. “Is that another jest, Your Grace?”
“I don’t jest,” he said, sounding faintly appalled.
So she was to sit on the horse with him, clutching him like a damsel in a lurid novel?
Her every feminine instinct cried no, and he must have guessed as much, for his expression hardened.
“It seems unsafe,” she tried.
“I’m a good horseman,” he said, and wedged the crop beneath the stirrup. To clear his hands to lift her, she assumed.
A shiver ran through her, she was not sure whether hot or cold. She could still step around him and continue walking toward the village, as far away from this man as possible.
He shot her a dark look. “Come here.”
Unbelievably, she took a step toward him, as if he had tugged at her bodily, and he didn’t miss a beat—he took her elbow and turned her, crowding her back against the warm body of the horse. She smelled sweat and leather and wool; the wool had to be him, for he again stood too close, trapping her between the stallion and his chest.
“Near instant compliance, Miss Archer?” he murmured, his gaze intent on her face. “You must be feeling the cold after all.”
She stared back into his eyes. She couldn’t help it; her gaze became strangely anarchic around him as if it quite forgot that not all gazes were created equal. Perhaps it was the contrasts that drew her in, pale clearness, dark rims; flashes of guarded intensity in cold depths . . . She watched as his attention dropped to her lips.
Her mouth went dry.
His jaw clenched. In an annoyed way.
“Your teeth are chattering,” he said. “This is ridiculous.”
His hand went to the top button of his coat, a gesture old as instinct, and she froze. So did the duke, his hand suspended in midair. His face was almost comically blank as he looked at her, and she knew his impulse to keep her warm had taken them both by surprise. While he might consider it his duty to keep her from perishing on his land, wrapping her in his coat like a fine lady would go too far. She was not a fine lady. She was not his to protect.
He began working loose his scarf. “Take this.” He sounded sterner than ever before. This was a battle she shouldn’t pick. She slung the scarf around her neck and tried to ignore the scent of cedar soap and man that wafted from the soft wool.
Montgomery’s hands wrapped around her waist with a firm grip; next thing she was perching atop the nervously shifting stallion, half on its neck, half on the saddle, clutching fistfuls of shiny white mane. Holy Moses.