Disciplining the Duchess by Annabel Joseph Read Free Book Online Page A

today?
    A bloodthirsty topic, but she was not known for her girlish repartee. “Yes, I did,” he said aloud. “A hare and several pheasants.”
    She shuddered. “I hope the hare did not have babies. They will be crying now, wondering where their mama is.”
    “It was a male hare,” he lied.
    This did not placate her. “I’m sure other mamas were killed today, and on every other day you and the gentlemen go out to hunt. Is it necessary to kill helpless creatures?”
    He gazed down at her, thinking how desperately the contrary young woman needed to be spanked. “Are you one of those crusaders who oppose blood sport, Miss Barrett?”
    “I find it distasteful to kill things. To want to kill things,” she added, giving him an affronted look, as if it was her own mama hare he’d shot.
    “You feel strongly about things, don’t you? Yes.” He answered his own question. “But in this case you need more information.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Do you know about the benefits of culling? Reducing the herd? Hares are pests to the farmers and villagers, and with the rate at which they reproduce, they might soon overrun all the crops in England. What would be done then?”
    They walked a few steps in silence as she bit her lip. “Oh.”
    “Counting out the inconvenience of not having enough bread or produce on your table, what would become of the hares—and the hares’ babies —when their own sources of food became scarce through overpopulation?”
    It was not a conversation he would have had with a typical lady, but he rather enjoyed watching Miss Barrett work through it in her agile mind.
    “I had never thought of it like that. It would be quite disastrous, wouldn’t it? Still…it seems cruel. Killing.”
    “It is cruel in a way, but kinder to shoot a hare or stag or fox than have them overrunning the countryside, forming packs and slowly starving for lack of food.”
    She would not meet his eyes. He was not forgiven yet for his gentlemanly crime of hunting. Perhaps he never would be. Young ladies’ hearts were so capricious, which was why he avoided having anything to do with them. Usually. Until now.
    They walked in silence for a few moments until they rounded the other side of the lake and headed back toward the manor. Her gaze fixed on the distant house guests. He detected a subtle stiffening of her spine. “Aren’t you glad now you did not attack him in front of everyone?” he asked.
    “He deserved a drubbing.”
    Do not laugh. Do not encourage her. “You must behave in a mannerly fashion, Miss Barrett. Without manners, we are…savages.”
    “I should like to leave,” she burst out. “This instant, I should very much like to leave this house party and return to London.”
    “Shall I escort you to Sedgefield so you might hire a carriage and be on your way?”
    She bristled at his mocking tone. “I wish you would. I’m sure my brother and our hostess would both find themselves well rid of an inconvenient guest.”
    “You are not inconvenient. Merely unconventional. And undisciplined,” he added for his own private titillation.
    She gasped, her eyes going wide. “I don’t think it is very polite to call ladies ‘undisciplined.’”
    “I don’t normally do so. But in this case…”
    Her blue eyes snapped in irritation, for he was not being a gentleman. He did not feel, at present, very much like a gentleman. He felt the strongest urge to tumble her back on the grass and kiss her outrage away—after he disciplined her, of course. He settled for a much-more-appropriate shrug of his shoulders. “It is not that difficult a thing to use manners. For instance, in turning down a dance with creaky old Monmouth, you might more delicately plead the headache than profess yourself bloated.”
    Miss Barrett sputtered. “Did you— Who said—?”
    “I fear nearly everything you say is repeated. If I were you I would use it to my advantage. Say some horrid things about that bounder Lord Sheffield,