by Maya Rodale
She thought she’d heard The Beast’s voice, but that was ridiculous. That was just her fear talking, and she was tired of listening.
That racing heart of hers? Perhaps, just once, it wasn’t fear but anticipation. Thus she grabbed her shawl and hurried down the back stairs, through the back door, and out into the rain.
She started to run, as if she’d be so fast the raindrops couldn’t touch her. But then she took a moment to stand still and turn her face up to the sky. The air was surprisingly warm. The sky was a light gray. The earth smelled fresh and wonderful. It felt lovely to be outside, breathing in fresh air and the scent of warm rain and wet earth.
And then she dashed toward the shelter. And Castleton.
After wrenching open the thick wooden door, Prudence slipped inside. The stables were dimly lit; just a little of the gray light from outside filtered in from the new windows. The floor was hard-packed dirt under her boots. And the air was thick with the scent of horses and hay and rain.
She heard the rain drumming on the roof and the soft breathing of the horses and their shuffling in the stalls.
And then there was Castleton: tall, strong, and impossibly handsome. He seemed perfectly at ease here, yet she could easily picture him in a ballroom, with all the women giving him coy smiles and flirtatious glances. She wondered why she hadn’t seen him in London.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Castleton said, strolling toward her. As he passed the horses, they stuck their heads out of the stalls and followed him with their eyes.
“No one is more surprised than I to be out here,” she said.
“Indeed, for a fancy London lady—”
“No, it’s not that,” she said, cutting him off. “It’s just . . . we’re alone.”
“Under the watchful supervision of these horses,” he said, with a gesture to all the animals that were, indeed, watching them. That made her smile.
ONCE AGAIN, HER smile did things to him. Castleton watched her glance around nervously with those brown eyes of hers, like the chocolate she drank in bed every morning. In these stables, she was worlds away from home.
Why was she traveling alone, anyway? The question nagged at him.
The more he knew about her, the more he was sure that something had sent her running from the world where she belonged, and the more he wanted to know her story, to know her.
What was he to do about it? A gentleman always honored a lady’s wishes. . . .
There was nothing to do, really, but introduce her to the animals.
“Would you like to say hello to the horses?”
“Yes,” she said, with the sort of determined tip of her chin that revealed she was intent on overriding her hesitations. It was those little things that made him want to hold her, to know her, and to strip away layer after layer until he knew, intimately, the real woman beneath.
But some creatures were more skittish than others. They needed patience and restraint and a gentle touch. But first, the horses and keeping Miss Merryweather so entertained that she forgot to be scared for just a moment.
Castleton led her to the first stall.
“This is Penny,” he said. “Rutherford’s mare.”
“She’s beautiful,” Miss Merryweather murmured. The mare was a dark copper-colored horse with a darker mane and tail. There was a white streak along the bridge of her nose that was her most defining mark.
“What do I do?” Miss Merryweather asked, staring up into the large, dark eyes of the horse.
“Hold out your hand as you would to a gentleman at a ball.”
Miss Merryweather burst out laughing.
“I’m not jesting,” Castleton said. “You cannot just jump on a horse and have a ride. You have to make their acquaintance first. Then assure them your intentions are good and earn their trust. Go on, I promise this will be fine. Hold out your hand.”
Miss Merryweather extended her arm, palm down. Penny tentatively took a sniff, blowing hot, damp air across Prue’s hand. She gasped and yanked it away, and the horse lifted her head and took a few steps back.
“She knows you’re afraid.”
“How?”
“Many animals can sense a person’s emotions. Like fear.” He leaned against the stall, watching Miss Merryweather approach once more. Penny looked at her warily, then at him, as if seeking his opinion of this nervous girl. “It makes them skittish, too. Some horses, like Penny, have a strong mind, and if the human isn’t in control and assured, they’ll try to take advantage to do what they want. They know they don’t have to listen.”
“Oh,” Miss Merryweather sighed, lost in her thoughts. Everything Castleton said had struck a chord with her. She was skittish and nervous and never forceful enough to ensure people respected her.
Then again—she had been raised to be demure, obliging, and deferential. All girls were.
“Try again. She won’t bite,” Castleton urged. Prue looked up at him, half wary, half smiling.
“Are you sure?”
“Nope,” he said with a grin. “But I doubt it.”
He watched, kind of enchanted, as she drew a deep breath and tried again. She stretched out her arm and waited for Penny to become aware, then curious enough to take a few steps over and sniff. This time Miss Merryweather remained still.
“Here, now give her this,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket for an apple he’d plucked from the tree in the garden. “She’ll love you forever once you feed her.”
“Is it that simple?”
“For men, animals . . . yes. For women, it’s a little more complicated.”
More assured now, Prudence took the apple and held it out to Penny. But once the horse’s mouth opened up, revealing giant teeth, Prue shrieked and dropped the apple.
“Hold it like this,” he said, demonstrating a flat palm. “That way she can’t bite you.”
It took a few more tries, but eventually the horse was eating from her hand. It wasn’t much longer after that before Miss Merryweather was resting her cheek against the horse’s neck and breathing in deeply. She turned to Castleton with one of those smiles that could take a man’s breath away. In this moment, she was happy. When she was happy, she was radiantly beautiful. She reminded him of a bird just learning to fly again after a broken wing.
What happened to her? he wondered.
Who knows what would happen when the rain stopped? They would go their separate ways. But . . . even though he was desperate to get to London in time for the Great Exhibition, he was glad for the rain, because he wasn’t quite ready to part ways with her yet.
Did she feel the same? From the look in her dark, velvety brown eyes, he thought yes.
Hesitantly he took a step closer to her. The world, save for their immediate surroundings, ceased to exist. There was only the sound of the rain, the scent of earth, Prudence’s plump, pink mouth that he wanted to taste.
He peered closer, noting thick black lashes and a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. There was the slightest part in her lips. Her hands anxiously gripped the folds of her skirt.
And then there was his desire. There was the driving need to kiss her and the ache to enfold her in his arms. There was just plain wanting.
He stepped in closer. She took a deep breath, tilted her head up, and lifted her lips to his. And then she closed her eyes. Before his gaze was riveted to her lips, he noticed, for a second, those dark lashes resting against her cheeks.
His mouth touched hers. It just had to happen.
For one fleeting second, everything was right in the world. All the things that could keep them apart were kept at bay. For one fleeting second, there was bliss and there was happiness. There was just enough that he wouldn’t be able to let go of the sensation or the memory when it was over, but not enough that he was satisfied.
Too soon, it was over. Penny whinnied and pawed the ground, wanting more apples. That jolted them both back to reality: two strangers with secrets, in the stables, in the rain, in this town n
o one knew the name of.
When Miss Merryweather whispered, “I have to go” and ran off, he wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
Prudence ran across the garden, through the back door, and up the back staircase. She didn’t stop until she reached her bedchamber, shut the door, and locked it. Then, back against the wooden boards, she slid down to the floor, touching her lips all the while.
It was just one little kiss, just the merest caress of his lips against hers. It was brief—it only felt like an eternity. It certainly wasn’t enough to ruin a girl or to constitute grounds for marriage. The kiss wasn’t even very passionate, or deep, or intense. The kiss was sweet and innocent, and it was exactly what she needed.
She felt a surge of triumph, for she had done something that scared her. She had faced her fears and was rewarded with a sweet kiss from a handsome man. Alone in her room, Prudence was quite nearly ecstatic.
If only those London gents weren’t downstairs in the parlor! She would have to stay in her bedchamber all evening. Especially since she overheard one of their voices and oh lud, if it didn’t sound uncannily like The Beast.
She banished the thought of him and touched her lips, remembering Castleton’s kiss.
Later that night
“Ugh, this rain! I feel like a caged beast, trapped in this inn,” Dudley grumbled as he paced across the worn floorboards of the parlor. His blond hair bore evidence of his frustration, for he had taken to pushing it back and even grasping handfuls. Every so often he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window—he looked like a madman.
He felt like a madman.
Fitz-Herbert lounged in a rickety wooden chair, pushed back from the table. The remnants of a humble, but admittedly delicious, feast spread out before them: savory meat pies, roasted squab, boiled potatoes, and thick slices of freshly baked bread with salted butter. Their wineglasses were, tragically, nearly empty.
“Whilst you’re up, do ring for more wine, will you?”
Dudley stalked across the room and pulled the cord.
“Cards?” Fitz-Herbert suggested.
“All we ever do is play cards,” Dudley complained. “I’m bored of cards. I’m bored of this rain.”
“Sometimes we wager.”
“Yes, on cards,” Dudley said witheringly. “Or stupid things like who can piss the farthest.”
“I wager you five pounds that I can.”
“I’m not in the mood for a pissing contest. Not when it’s pissing rain like this. At this rate, we’ll never make the boxing match.”
“We should build an ark.”
Dudley looked at Fitz-Herbert like he was an utter moron, which he was. Being an utter moron, Fitz-Herbert thought he’d been misunderstood and endeavored to explain himself.
“It’s biblical. Forty days and forty nights of flooding, remember? I know it’s been a while since you darkened a church door, but everyone knows the flood and the ark that Noah built. So we should do that. And then we’ll be able to cross that river and get to London.”
Dudley was spared from replying by the arrival of the barmaid, who had anticipated their desires and brought another bottle of wine. As he took it from her, he wondered if she might satiate some other desires of his. He allowed his gaze to slide down to her ample bosom and flared hips. Then he looked up to her face. She gave him the sort of hardened look that let him know, plainly, that she’d be more trouble than she’d be worth. As if the maid could read his mind, the old innkeeper, Rutherford, attended to them for the rest of the night.
Thus he spent the rest of the night drinking red wine and pacing across the floorboards whilst Fitz-Herbert rambled about gossip from town. It was just that he felt so powerless. He couldn’t travel in this rain, so he was forced against his will to stay here. And that was just today’s injustice. His father, older and older each day, clung to control of the estates right down to the unfairly ungenerous allowance deposited in Dudley’s accounts—provided Dudley did as he was told. He was a man with nothing to do, no control over his fate, no control over anything. It rankled, that. No, it burned. He was a man. He could prove it. He would prove it. At the next opportunity he would show them all he didn’t take orders from anyone and that no one ever said no to him.
Chapter 11
The following morning
Five days before the Great Exhibition
JOHN FOUND IT amusing that he should be standing next to Miss Merryweather while the rain poured down for yet another day. Even though he was increasingly anxious about returning to London in time, the thought made him laugh softly to himself as he stared out the window.
“What is so amusing?”
“I am standing with a girl named Merryweather during an epic rainstorm,” he told her. “Whilst I am curious as to your Christian name, I’m afraid to ask. What if it’s Hellfire or Plague of Locusts? Or Peace on Earth?”
She laughed in spite of herself, a lovely, lilting sound. Some of the tension in her shoulders eased. He really shouldn’t be so attuned to the tension in her shoulders or anything else so intimate about her. But John couldn’t help it; he was just aware of her.
The little trembles that shook her, her haunted expression and wry smiles, the occasional bursts of laughter—he noticed it all. There was something about her that put him in mind of a baby deer. Those eyes, big and brown and full of fear. The way she startled at the slightest thing and ran.
He was not a hunter.
In fact, he was the sort that had brought home every wounded animal he’d come across. His mother had always sighed and said, “I don’t know about this” fretfully as he had nursed back to health birds with broken wings and rabbits with broken legs. Letting them go had always been difficult.
“Prudence,” she said, apropos of nothing.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My name is Prudence.” She turned her head and looked up at him. “My name is Miss Prudence Merryweather.”
“Mine is John Roark.” He punctuated it with a lordly, rakish bow that drew a smile to her lips.
“Shouldn’t you have at least seven middle names, which consist of some combination of William, George, Peregrine, Edward, and Henry?”
“Well, my full name is Jonathan James William Roark Hathaway, Viscount Castleton.”
“I knew it. Most peers have names longer than they are tall. And you’re rather tall.”
“You noticed,” he said. Not that it was a detail easily overlooked.
“I noticed,” she confirmed with a slight blush.
“What else have you noticed?”
“You didn’t follow me the other night. Or yesterday afternoon,” she said softly. “Thank you. I wanted to be alone.”
Something bad had happened to Prudence; he was sure of it. Even the most propriety-minded miss relaxed a bit more around a man during a chaperoned waltz. Their brief kiss yesterday was not the stuff that ruined a maiden. But it was the haunted look in her eyes and her skittishness that made him sure.
What he wasn’t sure of: why this broke his heart as much as it did and why he ached to make her better. As if that was even in his power. As if she even wanted his help.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“Of course not. I’m fine,” she said with a determined squaring of her shoulders. It was for the best. Who was he to help her? He wasn’t the man she thought he was, and he had already revealed too much. Besides, he had to get to London as soon as possible. There was no time to care for a wounded creature he’d just have to let go of eventually.
Midday
A few hours later the rain still continued to fall, as if there were an endless supply. It was beginning to get to the point where one could believe in the wrath of God. John knew what sins he had committed, but he was hard-pressed to imagine what Prudence or even Buckley could be guilty of. The gents he’d briefly glimpsed in the dimly lit parlor last night were clearly the sort of men who were riddled with sins. But that was neither here nor there, and they w
ere upstairs sleeping off their late night and the excessive amounts of wine they’d consumed.
They were not worth his attention. He had to remain focused on what really mattered. His thoughts drifted to the Great Exhibition, which was just five days hence. He imagined scenes of England’s finest investors and craftsmen setting up displays of their new innovations. What excitement and energy must be in that grand room! His blood rushed faster through his veins just thinking about it.
He grew anxious considering the very real possibility that he might miss this opportunity as he stood in this parlor, watching the rain. God, he feared he might grow old and die just waiting for the weather to turn.
But this rain! His carriage, a fashionable and highly impractical town conveyance, did not have suitable coverage for this kind of downpour. Perhaps he could just be wet. According to the “gentlemen” in the inn, the bridge on the road to London had been washed away. But surely there was another, more circuitous route he could take. If he left now, he might just make it.
John turned away from the window to glance at Prudence. The name suited her. A cautious, reserved girl. And yet she was out in the world, dangerously alone. She didn’t make sense. He wanted, so badly, to know her.
She sat near the fireplace with a book she pretended to read—he knew, because after watching her for a few minutes, he realized that she didn’t turn the pages. On a small table nearby was a cup of tea that she occasionally sipped. In the silence and the relentless rain, he became acutely aware of the hours and days slipping away.
A lucky streak only lasted so long, and he was spending it—wasting it?—here. He didn’t even know where here was.
But Miss Merryweather was as content as could be here. Why? Where was she coming from? Why wasn’t she in a rush to go anywhere? Surely something or someone awaited her. And why wouldn’t she confide in him? Why was he so bothered that she didn’t?
John paced before the window. It. Was. Still. Raining.
“Something is bothering you. What is it?” she asked, glancing up from the book.
“I’m worried about making it to London in time for the exhibition,” he confessed, pushing his fingers through his hair. “I may not have another chance to meet the inventors of the engine otherwise.”
