Free At Your Pleasure by Meredith Duran Page B

ride, and the prospect of walking his own land also drew him strongly.
    He might have sent someone in his stead. But the prospect of a few hours’ distance drew him as well.
    He needed to clear his head and restore his equilibrium. A survey of everything he strove to protect would achieve that nicely.
    “You may compose sonnets for her if you like,” he said as he buckled the bag shut. “Hold a dance in the gallery, invite all the housemaids. Only keep her inside the damned house, and keep the tenants out. I will be satisfied.”
    “An easy task,” Lord John drawled, “if you but let me oversee it. Tenants come armed with pitchforks, not gunpowder and steel. And I am not as accustomed as you to scaring ladies into the wilderness. Even Medusa can be charmed.”
    Medusa. That had been the wits’ name for her at court. In a world of courtesies and artifice, her reserve—and her manner of looking a man directly in the eye without smiles or flatteries to soften her regard—had not endeared her to new acquaintances.
    “Do not underestimate her,” Adrian said.
    Lord John snorted. “Think me a fool?”
    A promising question. Adrian considered the boy, who lounged on the sofa in a satin coat, his boots atop a smallmahogany table meant for tea services. Fashionably slim, his face powdered thickly, his wig dressed in full curls, he looked as out of place in the dark environs of Hodderby as a hothouse flower in the kennels. Jeweled rings glittered on his fingers, which he twisted restlessly; at his elbow sat a goblet of canary wine purloined from Hodderby’s stores.
    Adrian would give him this: for a man so woefully out of his element, he did a damned good job of making himself comfortable.
    In the silence, Lord John’s color had begun to rise. Now he removed his boots and sat up. “Think me a fool?” he demanded again.
    Adrian’s turn to snort. A child’s vanity in a grown man’s body made a bad combination. “I think you accustomed to London,” he said, “and London ladies. The marchioness cut no great figure among them, but here she has friends aplenty. The loyalty of every man on these lands is hers, and their pitchforks outnumber our swords ten to one.”
    The lad looked truly astonished. “Peasants,” he said. “If they lift their hands to us, they lift them to the king!”
    Barstow had done his son a disfavor by sheltering him so wholly. “You are accustomed to the south,” Adrian said. “In these far-flung parts, the king is more legend than fact.”
    “That sounds like treason!”
    Nearly he laughed. Such callow idealism might be put onstage for money. “You must inform them so,” he said, “if you are unwise enough to find their tines at your throat.”
    “They would not dare,” Lord John said. “What? The prospect of such impudence amuses you?”
    He shrugged. It was not his business to disillusion Barstow’s naïve little fledgling. Life would manage that on its own. “Stay alert,” he said. “That’s what I mean.”
    After a moment, Lord John decided to be mollified. He sat back again, drawing deep of his cup. “You will be back by tomorrow night?”
    “If not before.” He hefted his saddlebag. “I leave you all twenty men. Were the sentries on their marks?”
    “Yes, yes,” the other man said irritably. “I made the rounds of their posts not two hours ago.”
    “Good.” Still Adrian hesitated. This unease was baseless, he told himself. There was no cause to expect David Colville until the sennight was out. As for Colville’s tenants, he did not truly adjudge them likely trouble. By and large, they were High Church, and had no deep reason to sympathize with their master’s quarrel.
    And yet, as he looked at John Gardiner, his instincts rebelled. To leave this painted piece in command of Hodderby, with full authority over the household, Nora included . . .
    Nora . His mouth twisted. The marchioness was none of his concern.
    “I bid you good even,” he said.
    Lord John waved