Catherine Coulter: Sherbrooke Twins

“All right. Then what did you get me?”

“Well, you know, Corrie, it’s been a long time.”

“Two weeks, you bloody sod.”

“Watch your mouth, my girl, or I’ll smack you again. You talk like a damned boy. I should have gotten a riding crop for your birthday so I could use it on you when the need arose. Like right now.”

He took a menacing step toward her, got hold of himself, and stopped. To his amazement, she walked right up to him, stood toe-to-toe, sneered up at him, and said in his face, “A riding crop? You just try it. I’ll take it away from you, rip off your shirt, and whip you with it.”

“Now that’s a sight I’d like to see.”

“Well, maybe I’d leave your shirt on you. After all, I’m a gently bred young lady and it wouldn’t do for me to see a half-naked man.”

He was laughing so hard he nearly fell backward off the damned cliff.

She wasn’t done, humiliation ripe in her voice. “You used your hand when you whipped me-your naked hand. I’ll wager I’m scarred for life, you bully.”

He grinned down at her. “Your bottom still smarting a bit?”

To his amazement, she blushed.

“Is your face turning red as well?”

She opened her mouth, then tears welled up in her eyes, and she jerked away, climbed into Darlene’s saddle, and straightened. She gave him a long, emotionless look, twitched Darlene’s reins, making her rear on her hind legs, sending James stumbling back. He heard her shout, “I will ask my uncle what men call a bosom. ”

He devoutly hoped she wouldn’t. He could picture her Uncle Simon’s eyes rolling back as he keeled over in his chair, his glasses sliding off his face. Uncle Simon was at home with his collection of leaves. He had leaves, carefully dried and pressed, from every tree found in Britain, France, and even two from Greece, one of them from an ancient olive tree near the Oracle of Delphi. Leaves, but not females. Uncle Simon wasn’t at home at all with females. James watched her ride away, not even looking at him to see if he’d survived her attack. Her long hair, tied up tight in a fat braid, slapped up and down on her back.

James dusted himself off, then shook his head. He’d grown up with the little twit. Since the day she arrived at Twyley Grange, home of her mother’s sister and husband, she’d followed him-not Jason, never Jason-only him, and how could a little girl possibly tell them apart? But she had. She’d even followed him once to the bushes when he went to relieve himself, an incident that had left him red-faced and sputtering with furious embarrassment when Corrie had said from off to his left side, “Goodness, you don’t do that like I do. Would you just look at that thing you’re holding! Why, I can’t imagine how to do-”

He was only fifteen, humiliated, his breeches still unbuttoned, and he’d yelled down at the child who was all of eight years old, “You’re nothing but a stupid worthless little girl!” and stomped off to his horse, and proceeded to nearly kill himself when a mail coach had come around a curve, spooking his horse, who threw him to the ground, senseless. His father had come to fetch him from the inn where he’d been taken. He’d held him close while the doctor had peered into his ears, for what purpose, his father told him later, he had no clue. James had settled against him and said in a slurred voice, “Papa, I relieved myself, but I used the wrong bush because Corrie was there and she watched me, and said things.” His father, without hesitation, replied, “Little girls happen, James, and then they become big girls, and you forget about the wrong bush. Don’t dwell on it.” And so James hadn’t. He let his father take care of him. He felt safe, his humiliation wafting out the open window.

Life, James thought now, was something that seemed to happen when you weren’t paying enough attention. It seemed to him that what you did right this minute became a memory all too quickly, just like Corrie turning eighteen-how had that happened? As he walked back to where he’d left his bay stallion, Bad Boy, he wondered if it was possible that one day he’d look at her and discover that she’d grown breasts. He laughed, looked up at the sky. It would be clear tonight, nearly a half-moon, a beautiful night to lie up here on his back and look at the stars.

As he rode back to Northcliffe Hall, James didn’t hold out any hope that his mother had gotten Corrie a riding crop for her eighteenth birthday, from him.

“YOU GAVE HER what? Mother, please tell me you didn’t sign my name to that.”

“Now, James, Corrie has no notion of what is expected of her when she goes up to London for the Little Season. I thought a lovely book on proper deportment for a young lady entering polite society was just the thing to get her thinking in the right direction.”

His mother already knew about Corrie’s Little Season? Where had he been? Why had no one told him? “A book on deportment,” he said blankly, and ate a slice of ham. He thought of that sneer of hers and said, “Yes, I can see that she would really need that.”

“No, wait, James, the book was from Jason. I got Corrie a lovely illustrated book of Racine’s plays from you.”

“All she’ll do is look at the pictures, Mama. Her French is execrable.”

“So was mine, once upon a time. If Corrie sets her mind to it, she will become as remarkably fluent as I am.”

The earl, who was watching with a half smile on his face from the other end of the table, nearly choked on his green beans. He arched a dark brow. “Once upon a time, Alexandra? And now you’re fluent? Why, I-”

“You are interrupting a conversation, Douglas. You may continue eating. Now, James, about the plays. As I recall, the illustrations are in quite the classical style, and I think she will enjoy them, even if she can’t make out all the words.”

James stared down at the chunk of potato speared on his fork.

His mother asked, “Why, James? Was there something else you wanted to get her?”

“A riding crop,” James said under his breath, but not under enough. His father choked again, this time on a stewed carrot.

His mother said, “She is a young lady now, James, even though she still wears those lamentable trousers and that disreputable old hat. You can’t treat her like your little brother any longer. Now, about this riding crop, why didn’t you get it for her yourself? Oh, I remember now that Corrie said she’d never use a riding crop on her horse.”

“I forgot her birthday,” James said, and prayed his father wouldn’t enlighten his mother.

“I know, James. As I recall, you weren’t here to ask, so I had no choice but to supply your gift.”

“Mama, couldn’t you have gotten her some clothes-you know, perhaps a nice riding habit or a pair of riding boots and signed my name to it?”

“That, my dear, wouldn’t be proper. Corrie is now a young lady and you are a young gentleman not related to her.”

“Young gentlemen,” said Douglas Sherbrooke, waving his fork at James from the head of the luncheon table, “only give clothes and riding boots to their mistresses. Surely you and I have already spoken of that, James.”

Alexandra said, “Douglas, please, James is my lovely little boy. Surely it isn’t the thing for you to speak of mistresses to him. Surely he needs years to ripen before he actually takes part in such, er, activities.”

Both her husband and her son stared at her, then slowly, they both nodded. James said, “Er, yes, of course, Mama. Many years.”

She said, “Douglas, I’m not a mistress and you’ve bought me clothes and riding boots.”