Free The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) by Miranda Davis Page B

yank. Her hands slipped. Mud splattered her face and dress.  
    They laughed together.  
    “Feel free to make a suggestion,” she said. “I’m no valet.”
    “Clearly. Fewings would have fainted dead away or drawn a razor across his throat to escape the horror of addressing these.”
    “How am I to remove them?”
    “Let me try.” Clun pried at one heel with the toe of his other sodden boot. It didn’t budge. He wriggled and scraped at them. He pushed down from the cuff while the fire warmed then heated the soaked leather. The boots grew snug.  
    “Nothing else for it,” he said and drew a small knife from the top of his right boot. He slipped the blade carefully between leg and leather to slice through the shank.  
    “Take care!” She cried out. It was, she feared, such a sharp blade. One slip and he might slash his leg.
    He looked up exasperated and said, “Please hold your outbursts till I am done. I wish to sacrifice a boot not a calf.”  
    She smiled at his pun and said, “Of course, forgive me.”
    He slit the boot to the ankle and shucked it. She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up the knife to silence her before he set upon the second boot and peeled it off.
    “I am sorry,” she said.  
    “Alas! They were good boots. Trusty boots.” Clun stood up in wet, stockinged feet and intoned mournfully, “Feet never knew better boots. I believe in my heart their soles are in heaven. Requiescat in pace .”
    “Amen,” she chuckled.  
    He grew solemn. “Lady Elizabeth, I shouldn’t have deceived you. Or played my childish pranks. Can you forgive me?” He watched her closely and she felt color rise to her cheeks. He leaned closer to whisper, “It was wrong of me, I admit, but I enjoyed your candid opinions about Lord Clun nonetheless.”
    She looked away and said, “And now it is my turn to apologize. I have insulted you without scruple and to add injury to insult you’ve ruined a fine pair of boots to treat for peace with me.”
    “Wrecked Hoby’s are a small price to pay if I’ve earned your pardon.” He hovered too close for comfort, though she welcomed the discomfort he caused.
    “If only I had known Lord Clun was so jokeative a gentleman, I might not have run off in the first place.”
    “Jokeative is not a word, my lady,” he murmured.
    “No, but it ought to be. Jokeative, as in tending to make too many jokes, just as talkative is tending to make too much conversation.”
    He smiled down at her and said, “Sad that Dr. Johnson died before you could contribute that to his dictionary.”
    She nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving his, and sighed, “I must agree.”  
    They stared silently at one another.  
    Finally, Clun roused himself, “One of my favorite terms of Dr. Johnson’s is obstipation.” Then he recited, “Obstipation: the stopping up of a passage, as in: A kiss causes an obstipation of both mouths involved.” Chuckling, he defined an obscure word from A Dictionary of the English Language . He stood too close and seemed on verge of illustrating the definition himself.  
    “Wag,” she replied in reproach, “a ludicrously mischievous person, as in: You, my lord, are a wag to threaten me with obstipation.”
    “Not waggish, uxorious.”
    “We are not yet married.”
    “But soon we will be.”  
    Rather than fall completely under his spell, she huffed, “I should like to see you submissively fond of your wife. Given your professed opinions, I cannot expect much fondness from you as a husband, can I?”  
    “Fondness, yes. Ridiculous, romantic, calf-eyed love, no, you may not,” he confirmed. “But when I am fond, Bess, I am very fond.”

    * * *

    To prove his point, Clun gathered his disgruntled fiancée in his arms. And yet again, she surprised him. Although he made her damp and cold, she didn’t shrink away. She accepted his embrace without flinching.  
    By God, he thought with relief, his betrothed was a hardy female with a wit that delighted