What a Lady Demands Read Online Free PDF

himself?
    She brushed at his bare knees, but he jerked out of reach, wavering with the movement. The green stains left by the grass remained stubbornly in place.
    “Perhaps you ought to hold my hand,” she suggested carefully.
    He tucked both hands beneath his arms and glared a challenge at her. “No.”
    “All right, then, but let’s just walk for now.”
    “I want to go look at those trees.” He pointed toward the oaks.
    Of course he did. “I’m not sure we ought to go that way.”
    “But I want to.”
    And how well Cecelia understood the lure of the forbidden. “Why? What’s over there that’s so interesting?”
    “I’d like to study the…the…” His brow puckered. “Blast it, what’s the word?”
    “And where did you learn to speak that way?” Under other circumstances, she wouldn’t have batted an eye at his language. She’d have even used similar terms. But a proper governess ought to take him to task for such a lapse in propriety.
    “Miss Barton. She was here after Miss Crump.” A sly grin stretched his cheeks. “She let herself slip when she didn’t think I was listening.”
    “Just don’t let your papa catch you using such words. Or worse.”
    He leaned toward her, brown eyes sparkling with mischief. “Do you know worse?”
    “If I did, I wouldn’t admit to it. Now, what were you trying to say?”
    “I think we should study the…I can’t think of it,” he wailed.
    Just like their conversation the day before. And what had they been discussing? Right. Military strategy. “Is it a foreign name, like Salamanca?”
    “No, it means…” He swept out an arm, taking in their surroundings with one broad gesture. “Well, everything.”
    Military. Heaven help her, let her get this right. “Do you mean you want to study the terrain?”
    “That’s it.”
    “And why should you want to do that?”
    “It’s what all good scouts do. They study the terrain so they can report back to their…their…”
    “Superiors?”
    “Yes, and then the officers can form a proper plan.” He gazed longingly on the tangle of trees and underbrush. “And that looks like a perfect spot to hide.”
    Could he even walk the few hundred yards to the copse? He’d had enough difficulty navigating the series of terraces, and that ground was relatively even. Once he got into the woods, how would he manage? But she couldn’t hint at so much. He’d surely take offense, as he had when she’d offered to hold him steady with her hand. No, she’d have to find another means of dissuasion.
    “What makes you think the enemy hasn’t found it first? Perhaps they’re in there, lying in wait.”
    He squinted at the trees, as if he expected to spot stealthy troop movement. “In that case, we must…fl-flush. That’s it, we must flush them out.”
    “And how do you propose to accomplish that?”
    He stared at her, brow puckered once more. “I think we’d better see if they’re in there first.”
    “How about I act as your scout and do that, shall I?” She could make it across the grounds and report back in a trice, and naturally she’d find no sign of the enemy. In fact, she could tell him they’d taken a different route entirely. One that lay closer to the house.
    He grabbed for her arm, as if her life hung in the balance. “You can’t do that. They don’t let ladies in the army.”
    They didn’t recruit boys his age, either, especially ones who seemed to have difficulty controlling their legs, but she wasn’t about to point that out. “All the better for me to trick them, if they’re in there. They won’t suspect a thing.” She stood and started toward the woods before he could mount another protest. “Now, you just wait for me here, and I’ll return with a report before you know it. I suppose this makes you the officer.”
    She let him puff out his chest a bit over that thought while she made her way across the sloping grounds. The grass might be neatly manicured, but the earth was deceptively