Clambering over the fence, he entered the kitchen gardens, where the house’s vegetables and savories were grown. He watched as the lamb trotted a path between two rows of turnips and squeezed under a second fence to enter a fallow plot bounded by meadow.
“Dinner,” he called, giving chase again and entering the meadow. “Dinner, come back now.”
When he reached the center of the field, he paused to catch his breath and scan the area for telltale tufts of wool. When the lamb failed to appear, he cupped his hands around his mouth and tried again. “Dinner!”
This time, his call earned an answer. Several answers. In fact, the ground shook with the collective bestial response. He spied several large, dark forms lumbering toward him through the twilight dusk. He blinked, trying to make them out. These weren’t sheep. No, they were . . .
Cows. Large cows. Remarkably fast and menacing cows. A small herd of them, all thundering straight for him where he stood in the center of the field.
Colin took a few steps backward. “Wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t mean you.”
The beasts didn’t listen to reason apparently. A shame, because they did have rather large ears. Or were those . . . horns?
He turned and made a mad dash for the fence.
Blighted idiot, he cursed himself as he pumped arms and legs, scrambling over the furrowed field. Corkbrained fool. What kind of imbecile entered a pasture at twilight and shouted “Dinner” at the top of his lungs?
One who hadn’t left London in a decade, that’s who.
“I hate the country,” he muttered as he ran. “I hate it. I bloody damned well hate it.”
In his hurry, he’d chosen a different route of escape than the way he’d entered the field. Rather than reaching a simple wooden stile, he ran smack up against a hedgerow. A thorny hedgerow.
“Hate it,” he said, pushing his way through the bramble and twigs. “Loathsome, miserable, reeking, wholesome farmland. Feh.”
He emerged on the other side of the hedge to find himself once again in the Summerfield gardens—the pretty bit, this time. He was scraped, but mercifully untrampled. He stood staring at the hedgerow a moment, picking bits of hawthorn from his clothing and cursing country life.
Then something odd caught his attention. A light smack on the head.
He wheeled around, batting blindly with a hand.
The next smack caught him across the face. A red burst of pain stung his already abraded cheek.
Good Lord, what was this? The Seven Plagues of Colin Sandhurst, squeezed into the space of one hour?
He raised his hands in defense, dodging the repeated blows.
“You villain,” a female voice accused. Smack. “You deceitful cur.”
Colin lowered his hands to get a proper look at his attacker. It was the middle Highwood sister. The dark-haired one. Miriam, was it? Melissa?
Whoever she was, she was hitting him. Repeatedly. With a glove.
“What on earth are you doing?” He dodged another smack, moving deeper into the gardens. He stumbled over a clump of daisies and narrowly missed a collision with a rosebush.
She chased him, still swinging away. “I want a duel.”
“A duel?”
“I know all about you and Mrs. Lange, you . . . you rutting . . .” Apparently lacking either the imagination or the bravery to complete the insult, she moved on. “I never liked you, I hope you know. I’ve always known you for a worthless bounder, but now my mother and sisters will suffer the pain of the revelation. You’ll have disappointed their hopes.”
Ah. So that’s what this was about. He was being made to answer for . . . for what, precisely? Flirting?
“Diana has no father or brothers to defend her honor. The duty falls to me.” She slapped him across the face again. “Name your seconds.”
“Good God. Will you stop with the glove?” He ripped the thing from her hand and tossed it into the thorny rosebushes. “I’m not going to accept your challenge. There will be no duel.”
“Why not? Because I’m a woman?”
“No, because I’ve seen the way you spinsters handle a pistol. You’d shoot me dead where I stood.” Colin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Listen, calm down. I haven’t touched your sister. Not in any improper way.”
“Perhaps you haven’t touched her improperly, but you’ve improperly led her on.”
“Led her on? Perhaps I danced and flirted with her a bit, but I’ve flirted with every young lady in this village.”
“Not every young lady.”
He paused, stunned. As he stared at her, he felt a grin nudging his cheeks. “So you’re jealous.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she replied, much too quickly to be credible.
“You are.” He wagged a finger at her, no longer on the retreat. “You’re jealous. I’ve flirted with every young lady in the village but you, and you’re envious.”
“I’m not envious, I just . . .” She made a gesture of frustration. “I just want to hurt you. The way you hurt my sister.”
The way he’d hurt her, she meant. If Diana Highwood had suffered one moment of pain on his account, Colin would swallow a Chinese dazzler. But this one . . . she was hurt.
Well, exactly how did she expect him to flirt with her? Lines like “river of silk” and “sparkling diamonds” would never work on a woman like this. She was too clever by half. Moreover, such comparisons would be wildly inaccurate. Her hair was nothing like silk, and her dark eyes bore no resemblance to diamonds.
Cooled volcanic glass, perhaps.
“Listen,” he said in a placating tone. “It’s not like that, Melinda. You are a tolerably pretty girl.”
“Tolerably.” She rolled her eyes and made a dismissive noise. “Tolerably pretty. What kind of compliment is that? And my name’s not Melinda.”
“No, not tolerably pretty,” he said, tilting his head for a better look. “Genuinely so. If only you’d . . .”
“Don’t say it. Everyone says it.”
“Everyone says what?”
She spoke in a low, mimicking tone. “ ‘If only you’d remove your spectacles, you’d be lovely.’ ”
“I wasn’t going to stay that,” he lied. “Why would I say that? What a perfectly stupid thing to say.”
“I know you’re lying. You dissemble as easily as you breathe. But my feelings aren’t at issue here. This is about your cruel misuse of Diana.”