What a Lady Demands Read Online Free PDF Page B

soft and pocked with rabbit holes. The poor child would never have made it across this stretch with his dignity intact.
    And was this another reason Lindenhurst kept him inside? So the boy wouldn’t embarrass himself with his inability to remain upright for long? The poor, poor dear. And she would have to find a way to let him burn off some of his natural energy that didn’t have him falling on his face every five paces.
    A pity he didn’t seem interested in horses. Perhaps if she could get him up on a pony, if his legs were strong enough to keep him in the saddle, he could move about the grounds. At some point in his life, he would have to find a way to inspect his property. As much as the boy seemed set on a military career, this land was his entire future. Best if he wasn’t obliged to spend years and decades confined to the house.
    As if her thoughts had sprung to life, the steady thud of hoofbeats sounded at her back. She turned. Lindenhurst bore down on her astride an enormous chestnut gelding. His buckskin breeches clung to his thighs, the cut so close she could see the contraction of his muscles as he guided his mount. Thanks to Cecelia’s curiosity, she could conjure an image of exactly what his thighs looked like beneath his garments—sun-kissed skin dusted with dark hair over powerful sinew.
    A spindly snip of a man on a swaybacked nag lagged behind Lindenhurst.
    “And just what are you contemplating?” Lindenhurst reined in not a foot in front of her. The horse snorted, spraying her bodice with warm saliva. “Did I not make clear that this part of the grounds was off-limits?”
    She reached into her skirts for her handkerchief and dabbed ineffectually at her bosom. “No, my lord, you did not.”
    A tinge of color rose in his cheeks, and his hands tightened on the reins. “I am quite certain I informed you the pond was not a place I wanted the boy to visit.”
    She made a show of glancing about her. Jeremy stood a few yards up the terrace, staring at Lindenhurst with what could only be described as hunger—a soul-deep yearning that speared through her heart and released a torrent of sympathy. The father held himself aloof, but the son
wanted
Lindenhurst.
    “Silly me. I thought the pond was on the other side of those trees.” Lindenhurst was going to give her the devil for her cheek, but she couldn’t help herself. “Or have you moved it since my last visit?”
    He leaned down from the saddle—on his good side, she noted—his brows lowered beneath his shallow-style hat. “You were headed straight for the path, and the boy was following you,” he informed her, his tone clipped and even, as if he were back in the army reporting enemy troop movement to his superiors.
    The boy. Several times now, he’d referred to Jeremy thus. And now he’d done so in front of the child. And given the way Jeremy had been staring at his papa, he was likely to feel the snub sooner rather than later. While he may refuse to pay attention to lessons, he was clever, certainly enough to notice an adult’s frosty attitude.
    Not just any adult. His own father. Cecelia knew the sting of a relative’s open disapproval. Bad enough when such a thing happened to her as a grown woman and from her brother. How much crueler must the experience be for a five-year-old who idolized his father?
    “Can you not refer to your son by his name?”
    Lindenhurst turned to the man who accompanied him. “Boff, take the boy back to the house. I’d like to have a word with Miss Sanford. In private.”
    —
    Lind waited while his man of affairs dismounted and took the boy by the hand. Jeremy scowled and yanked his arm out of reach, and the movement caused him to stumble. Again. All the better reason to keep the boy shut away in the nursery. The better to protect him from his own lack of grace. And his inability to walk more than a few steps without falling couldn’t then be a constant reminder of Lind’s own ambulatory difficulties.
    “Are