Frederica in Fashion by MC Beaton

chin and bent his mouth to hers. Frederica, in her dream, was passionately returning the merman’s kisses. The Duke of Pembury found himself at the receiving end of one of Frederica’s most passionate offerings. He thought he had never felt such a burning sweetness from a kiss in all his life. His lips buried deeper and his expert hands lazily caressed the slim young body pressed so tightly against his own.
    And then a voice seemed to scream in his head. ‘It’s that Armitage girl, you fool!’ He rolled away and jerked himself upright and started piling logs onto the fire.
    He twisted around. Frederica was, miraculously, still asleep, but a long sunbeam was shining through a chink in the wooden shutters.
    ‘Hell and damnation,’ said the Duke of Pemburybitterly. ‘Compromised. And by a schoolgirl. What the deuce kept me asleep so long?’
    Frederica’s eyes flew open at the sound of his voice and she stared up at him. Her eyes were great dark pools in the dim light of the hut.
    ‘Aye, you may stare, miss,’ snapped the duke. ‘I over-slept and thanks to your folly in losing yourself, I will now have to marry you. You!’
    Frederica sat up, her face flaming.
    ‘If you think for one minute, your grace, that I am going to tell anyone that I spent the night alone with you in this hut, you are very much mistaken.’
    ‘Do you mean to say, you don’t want to marry me?’ The Duke of Pembury looked at Frederica with an expression of shock mixed with disbelief in his black eyes.
    ‘Of course not, your grace,’ said Frederica. She laughed. ‘You are much too old.’
    He should have felt relief, he knew that. On the other hand his whole mind was screaming out that he had never been so insulted in all his life. Since he came of age, he had been fighting off debutantes. He knew that any girl or woman at the Season would rush into his arms at the slightest invitation.
    He shrugged himself into his coat. ‘I am possibly too mature for you for you are sadly childish. I will appreciate your discretion. You may cover yourself with my cloak. If asked where I found you, I will say I found you as you were leaving here this morning. Come along.’
    He strode to the door and wrenched it open. ‘Ihope all men are not so bad-tempered,’ thought Frederica dismally. ‘For my family is sure to find me a husband and they will nag me to death if I do not marry.’
    She bundled the folds of the duke’s cloak about her and followed him out of the hut.
    The air was fresh and sweet. Birds were chirping in the bushes and a mellow sun shone over the rain-sodden steeps of the gorge.
    The duke was striding up the path without looking behind him.
    ‘I cannot run after him,’ thought Frederica, ‘and leave the fire still burning and the game bags on the floor.’
    She hurried back into the hut and began to clear up. The duke made his reappearance just as she was pouring a pewter mug of cider over the fire.
    ‘Do you plan to stay here all day?’ he demanded.
    ‘I was merely putting things in order,’ said Frederica mildly. ‘Your cravat is still lying in the corner where you seem to have dropped it.’
    The duke picked it up and stuffed it in his pocket. He realized she had the right of it. It was folly to march off, leaving the hut with all the evidence that two people had passed the night there.
    When they were finally on their road, he saw, in the full sunlight, that her clothes were torn and muddy and that she was stumbling wearily.
    ‘Take my arm,’ he said abruptly. ‘We will follow the path in the opposite direction from where we came. With luck, we may soon find a road to the top.’
    Frederica looked about her in a dazed way. The roaring black nightmare of the night before had been transformed into a pleasant pastoral scene. Even the river was tamer now, broader and lazier.
    The path made a sudden twist away from the river and began to ascend in winding loops up the steep side of the gorge to their right.
    Frederica