the saddle, took her by the upper arms and hauled her bodily up in front of him. Laura kicked, twisted and found herself dumped unceremoniously to sit sideways across his thighs. ‘Ouch!’ The pommel jabbed into her. ‘Put me down!’
‘In my own good time.’ He turned the horse’s head away from the reservoir and shifted his arms so they caged her and he could take the reins in both hands. The gelding tossed its head as if in protest at the additional load, but walked on meekly enough.
‘People will see,’ she protested.
‘Then resume your veil,’ Avery said in a voice of sweet reason.
Laura contemplated wriggling free and dropping to the ground, but the animal was a good sixteen hands high and she risked a broken ankle if she tried that. Besides, the strength with which Avery had hoisted her up indicated that he would have little trouble subduing any attempt at escape. She was slender enough, but she was a well-built adult woman and no featherweight to be tossed about like a child. It was, she realised, fuming, rather exciting.
Crude, animal instinct, she told herself severely. He is big, strong and muscular, any woman would be in a flutter under the circumstances. And he probably knows it, the wretch.
His chest was broad and steady and it was impossible to lean away from it—in fact, she was squashed so close she could sense his heartbeat, infuriatingly steady. Beneath her buttocks his thighs were hard and, she realised with rising indignation as she worked out what was pommel, what was leg and what was...something else, that he was finding this arousing.
A middle-aged couple exercising a pair of Italian greyhounds on long leashes stared, mouths open in comic synchronisation. Laura dragged down her veil with something like a snarl.
‘That is a truly ghastly gown,’ Avery remarked.
‘I did not wish to draw attention to myself.’ Oh, stop bandying words with him!
‘Which proves my point. You were spying.’
Laura firmed her lips over the retort she was about to make and assumed as dignified a silence as a woman being abducted by a peer of the realm in broad daylight within a stone’s throw of two royal residences could.
Avery guided the horse across the Mall and into St James’s Park. Laura stiffened. This park was full of trees, avenues and groves of them, and at this hour it was even quieter than Green Park had been.
‘Where...what are you doing?’ It was shaming that her voice shook.
‘I thought I’d take you into that secluded little grove over there and see what effect wrapping my hands around that very lovely white neck of yours would have in persuading you to leave me and mine alone,’ Avery said with a grim edge to his voice that had her twisting round in alarm. His face was set, harsh and every bit as grim as his voice had been.
Laura opened her mouth to scream and he shifted the reins and clapped one hand over her mouth.
‘I do not like defiance,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘As you are about to find out.’
Laura bit the big, gloved hand over her mouth and heard Avery mutter what sounded like a curse under his breath, then they were within the grove. He reined in and removed his hand, leaving her with the taste of leather on her lips and rage in her heart.
‘I really would not bother wasting my breath if I were you,’ he remarked as she dragged air down into her lungs to scream. She ignored him and found herself slid unceremoniously over the horse’s shoulder to land on her feet, with the breath jolted clean out of her.
Avery swung down out of the saddle and the horse stood there, reins on its neck, like a statue. Laura was the only creature who ever dared gainsay Lord Wykeham, it seemed. Running did not seem to be an option, not faced with those long legs: she wouldn’t get three feet before he caught her. After all, what can he do?
She lifted her chin and glared at him. ‘Go ahead, strangle me, although I have no idea what you can do with my body, not having a spade handy.’
The sun shone through the leaves, the birds sang. Distantly, on Horse Guards Parade, a shouted order spoiled the illusion of being deep in the countryside. Avery’s eyes flickered over her, his mouth set in a grim line. He might be finding abducting a woman in the middle of London’s parks arousing, but it certainly did not seem to be giving him any pleasure.
He walked towards her, drawing off his gloves. ‘I can think of several things to do with your body, Lady Laura, but it’s your stubborn brain that requires dealing with.’ He pushed the gloves into a pocket as he stopped, toe to toe with her.
Laura made herself stand firm. ‘Really, this is positively Gothic! I am not afraid of you, Avery Falconer. Whatever else you may be, you are a gentleman and not a raving lunatic. You are not going to strangle me and we both know it.’
‘Of course I am not,’ Avery agreed. This close, without the slightest temptation to let her lids drop in erotic surrender, she could see how green his eyes were, a subtly different shade than Piers’s had been. Gold flecks danced like fire. Devil’s fire. ‘I simply require your undivided attention for a moment.’
‘Then you have it, my lord,’ she drawled and gave him the look that worked very well with importunate gentlemen who became overamorous in conservatories. It always sent them off looking crushed. Avery merely appeared bored.
‘I have said it once, but I do not think you have been paying attention. You will leave Alice alone. You will not watch her, you will not follow her, you will not contact her. Is that clear enough?’
‘As crystal. And if I ignore your demands?’
‘I will ruin you.’ He smiled.
‘Your threats are merely bluff. If you do expose me, then it will ruin Alice, too, you know that perfectly well.’
‘Her name will not come into it, her parentage will not be an issue. You are not listening to my threats, as you describe them. Actually, they are promises. I will ruin you. Society will discover that Scandal’s Virgin is actually Scandal’s Jade.’
‘That would be rape,’ she flashed at him. ‘I cannot believe it of you. Even of you.’
‘It would, indeed, and even I...’ his lip curled as he parroted her sneer ‘...even I would baulk at that. But fortunately for you, and for my scruples, all it needs is the appearance of the thing. Rumour, a whisper of scandal. A bet in the club books, a sighting of Lady Laura where she should not be, a few urgent and earnest denials on my part—and I will protest far too much, far too earnestly, just as a gentleman should—and the damage will be done.
‘You have been very skilful, balancing on the edge, skating on thin ice. You dangle men on a string, leading them on. There’s a nasty little phrase for women like you, Lady Laura Campion. Cock tease.’
On a gasp of outrage she stepped back and he lifted his hands from his sides, his palms open as though to demonstrate that he need not touch her, then he let them fall to his side, and smiled.
‘Men have all the power,’ she said as she found her voice at last. It trembled with anger, but she could not help that. ‘You take what you want because the strength is on your side, the law, the double standards of behaviour. Men want my dowry, they want my bloodlines, they want my body and I do not choose to give those to any man because even the ones who protest undying love are unreliable. There is always something more important than a woman in their lives. I choose to entertain myself by playing the game with male rules and if that is uncomfortable for a gentleman I really do not care.’
She stopped because she was exposing herself and her pain all too plainly and his threats had the chilling ring of truth. He could ruin her with ease, just as he said, without laying a finger on her and without the slightest danger to Alice. ‘You win, my lord.’ She would not gratify him by squirming on his