To say he was protective of his horses – particularly his broodmares – would have been a vast understatement. No one except for himself and his grooms were ever allowed to touch them. They weren’t pleasure animals, they were breeding stock. And they – bloody hell. Was that a carrot?
“You there!” he called out sharply. “Step back at once!”
Ignoring him, the cloaked figure climbed up on the fence and stretched their arm all the way through the rails, an orange carrot dangling from their fingertips as they tried to coax Lady Rebecca, the dam of the colt who had taken the Derbyshire Cup, a few steps closer.
Gritting his teeth, Eric pressed his heels into his stallion’s sides and the great black thoroughbred leaped forward as though springing from the starting gate. As they came thundering down over the crest of the hill the interloper panicked and squeezed himself between the rails, tumbling headfirst into the pasture.
“Got you now,” Eric said grimly, but no sooner had the words left his mouth than the rest of the mares, enticed by the smell of a stallion, came running across the field in a rippling wave of sleek muscle and deadly hooves.
He was of half a mind to let the stupid fool get trampled to death. It would be no less than he deserved for trying touch one of his horses. But then the stupid fool’s cloak fell back, revealing soft yellow hair spun from gold and the terrified countenance of his wife. Lurching to her feet, Caroline ran towards the fence and jumped onto the middle rail, clinging to it like a kitten dangling down from a tree as the herd of mares came barreling towards her.
“Goddammit,” Eric cursed as the anger in his chest turned to ice. Pulling hard on the reins, he leapt from the saddle before his mount had come to a full halt and sprinted towards the fence. Grabbing hold of his wife’s slender forearms, he yanked her up and over the top rail just as the mares reached them.
Clods of dirt and grass rained down from the sky as they fell backwards. Instinctively protecting Caroline with his own body, Eric struck the ground first. Grunting from the force of the impact, he rolled once, twice, and came to a stop in the shade of a towering oak tree with Caroline cradled on top of his chest.
She was so still that for a moment he feared she’d been knocked unconscious…but then he saw a flash of gray as she peeked down at him through her tangled hair and his fear turned to fury.
“You little idiot!” he growled, blue eyes flashing with temper. “You could have been run down! What the devil were you thinking, climbing into that field? Those horses are easily ten times your size!”
“I – I am sorry,” she whispered haltingly. “I was only trying to–”
“Get yourself killed?” Eric gritted his teeth as he fought the urge to shake some sense into her. He’d known his wife was cripplingly shy, but he hadn’t any idea she was so dimwitted! Or so soft…
When she tried to push herself upright her hip brushed against his upper thigh and he suddenly found himself gritting his teeth for another reason all together.
It wasn’t because he found her attractive. She was pretty enough in a wallflower sort of way, but his personal preferences had always run towards more exotic beauties. Ones with dark hair and full red lips and heated glances that could burn a man from across the room. Caroline had none of those traits, and yet as she squirmed and wiggled he could feel heat shooting straight to his loins.
“Stop that,” he said harshly.
She looked down at him in confusion. “Stop what? I am not doing anything.”
He groaned when her breasts brushed against his arm. “Stop moving. Unless you want our son to be conceived underneath a tree.”
“No – no,” she squeaked.
“Good.” Jaw clenched, he waited for his arousal to pass. But when it didn’t – when it only got worse – he propped himself on his elbows and glowered at the bewitching blonde sprawled on top of his hard, pulsating body. “I need you to stand up.”
Caroline bit her bottom lip, and the sight of her plump mouth caught between her teeth was nearly his undoing. “But you just said–”
“I know what I bloody well said!”
What the devil was wrong with him? He could feel his heart racing the same as it had when he’d been an inexperienced lad of sixteen about to divine the pleasures of a woman’s flesh for the very first time.
Two months without a mistress and I am lusting after my own wife, he thought in disgust.
Who did he think he was?
His father?
The unsettling thought was just what Eric needed to bring him to his senses. Wrapping his hands around Caroline’s waist, he set her off to the side before springing to his feet. Brushing leaves off his fawn colored breeches, he stiffly extended his right arm down towards his wife but with a hurtful glance she gathered her skirts and managed to rise without his assistance.
“What is it?” he said on an exasperated sigh when she continued to look at him like a lost little fawn peering out through the bushes at a big hungry wolf. “You’re not going to start crying again, are you?”
Even though she did look suspiciously close to tears, Caroline gave a tiny, albeit firm shake of her head. “No. I just wanted to say – I wanted to say that you needn’t yell at me all of the time.” She lifted her chin, revealing a spark of defiance he had never seen before. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Nothing wrong?” he said incredulously. “You nearly got yourself killed!”
“I did not know the horses would come running so quickly.”
“You never should have been near their field in the first place, let alone inside of it.” He scowled down at her. “My horses are prized possessions, not pets. You’re not to go near them again. Do you understand?”
“I wasn’t going to hurt them,” she whispered, looking so dismayed that Eric was nearly tempted to pull her back into his arms.
His brow furrowed. What was it about his tiny slip of a wife that made him think such foolishly romantic thoughts? His mistresses had been after him for years to show emotion. ‘It is like you do not care for me at all’ they’d say, to which he always pointed out – quite reasonably – that he’d showered them in a small fortune’s worth of furs and jewels. What else could they possibly want? They’d known what they were agreeing to when they had climbed into his bed. And not a single one of them had ever been able to make him feel any guilt for his callousness.
Except for Caroline.
“I know you weren’t,” he said gruffly. “I should have told you that the fields were off limits.” His fingers wrapped around the nape of his neck and sank down into the corded muscle. “Do you like to ride?”
To his surprise, she nodded. Given how tentative and easily frightened she was, he would never have taken her for an equestrian. It took a certain amount of boldness to climb atop a twelve-hundred-pound animal. No horse was completely infallible, not even a sweet-tempered gelding, and every time a person placed their foot in the stirrup they were putting themselves at considerable risk for injury.
“That’s something we have in common, then.” His mouth stretched in what he thought to be an encouraging smile, but Caroline did not look very convinced.
“I suppose.” She nudged a clump of grass with the toe of her boot. “Would you – would you care to go riding together sometime?”
“I don’t see why not,” he said.
Visibly startled, she looked up at him with wide eyes. “Do you really mean that?”
“I do.” As much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t ignore her completely. She was his wife, after all. And if they were going to spend time together, he’d rather they do it in the saddle. “I have a colt who could use the exercise, and an older draft mare that would make a fine lady’s mount.”
“That sounds lovely,” she said, and her small, tentative smile aroused a flicker of warmth within his cold, unfeeling heart. Not liking the sensation, nor what it implied, he took a step back both figuratively and literally.
“Very well. I shall bid you good day
, then.”
“You – you’re leaving?”
“I have other things to do,” he said brusquely.
“What sort of things?” she called after him when he started to walk away.
He stopped short, a cutting retort souring the tip of his tongue, but when he looked back at Caroline the only sound to come from his lips was a startled hiss of air.
Bloody hell. Had he really thought her a plain wallflower? Standing beneath the red and orange leaves of the oak with her hair unbound and her skin kissed by sunlight she looked like a woodland fairy princess. One plucked straight from the pages of a Shakespearean play.
There was an etherealness to her beauty that he’d never noticed before. An understated elegance that glowed from within her. She was a quiet sunset after a long summer’s day. She was the soothing moment of calm after a hard storm. She was fresh snowfall on an open field. And in that moment he wanted her so badly that he ached.
“Your Grace?” she said uncertainly, making Eric realize that he’d been staring at her with his jaw agape like some sort of love struck fool.
“What?” he snapped, hands diving into his pockets as he rocked back on his heels. “What the bloody hell do you want now?”
Caroline started to say something. Stopped. Frowned. “Nothing.” She spoke so quietly that Eric thought he’d misheard her until she added, “I want absolutely nothing from you.”
And for the very first time since they’d met, she walked away from him.
Chapter Five
The man is an absolute beast, Caroline thought as she stalked across the lawn, blinking furiously against the tears that stung the corners of her eyes. And it’s no wonder he asked me to marry him. Why, I bet no one else was brainless enough to have him!
Marrying a duke was every debutante’s dream come true. But not when the duke in question was an arrogant cad who cared more about his horses than his own wife! Maybe he should have left her to be trampled. At least then she would not have to deal with his general insufferableness.
Dashing her handkerchief against her cheeks where a few tears had managed to escape, she stopped short and forced herself to draw a deep breath. No matter what her husband said – or did – she refused to become the sort of wife who burst into tears at every little provocation. Contrary to what Eric, she was not prone to dramatic airs.
If she was going to find some semblance of happiness in her new life then she needed to start by working on her own backbone. Maybe then her husband’s insults, instead of stinging like nettles, would merely slide right off her back like water from a duck.
What had he called her in the church? A field mouse, she recalled with a frown. Well, perhaps it was time she stopped being a mouse and started being a cat.
She was given a chance to test her claws the next evening when she stumbled across Eric reading in the library. Her first instinct was to mumble an apology and duck right back out again, but instead she forced herself to square her shoulders and select a thin volume of poetry from one of the shelves.
“What are you reading?” she asked as she sat down next to him in an oversized leather chair that dwarfed her small frame. It was so large that her feet did not even touch the bearskin rug laid out in front of the fireplace and after several moments of trying to make herself comfortable she finally gave up and tucked one slender leg underneath her hip. It certainly was not the most ladylike of positions, but it wasn’t as if her husband was looking at her, so what did it matter?
“A book,” he grunted without so much as a glance in her direction. Firelight bathed one side of his face in a warm orange glow, illuminating the rigid line of his jaw and the firm set of his mouth. His brows were drawn together as he read, his gaze intent on the page before him. He might as well have been wearing a sign round his neck that said ‘Do Not Speak to Me’. Unfortunately for him – and for her – that was precisely what she intended on doing.
You’re a cat, she reminded herself. Not a mouse that is going to run scurrying under the nearest sofa at the first sign of trouble.
Setting aside the volume of poems she had been pretending to read, she took a deep, bracing breath. And then, before her newfound courage had time to desert her, she blurted the one question that had been plaguing her since they’d exchanged their vows in the church.
“Why did you marry me?”
“What do you mean?” he asked without bothering to look up.
Caroline blinked. “I – I thought I was rather clear.”
For a moment the only sound was the merry crackling of the fire, and then came Eric’s heavy sigh. “Do you really wish to discuss this right now?” he said, dragging his gaze away from his book with obvious reluctance. “Or can it wait until morning?”
She gripped the armrests so tightly that her nails made small crescent indentations in the buttery soft leather. “I – I suppose it could wait, but I would rather discuss it–”
“Very well.” He snapped the book closed with so much force that she jumped. “I married you because I needed a wife. There. Does that answer your question?”
She blinked again. “Well…no. No, I am afraid that doesn’t answer it at all. Why – why did you pick me in particular? There were a hundred, mayhap even a thousand other women who were more eligible to be a duchess.”
“A thousand may be overstating things a bit. Did you see the latest crop of debutantes?” Eric shuddered. “The one poor girl’s face was so long she would have fit right in with my horses.”
She frowned. “That’s a very cruel thing to say.”
“It’s not cruel, it’s the truth,” he corrected. “And the truth is rarely kind.”
“Be that as it may, I believe you understand what I am trying to say. We were strangers when you proposed.”
“I don’t know if I would have called us strangers,” he said, rubbing a hand across his jaw where a day’s worth of stubble had grown.
“We had only danced once. You called me Catherine when you asked me to be your wife.” The embarrassing memory still caused her cheeks to flush. “I believe that is the very definition of strangers.”
“I did not call you Catherine.” His brow furrowed. “Did I?”
“You did,” she confirmed. “You got down on one knee and took my hand and said, ‘Dear Catherine, will you do me the honor of being my wife’?”
“Hmm.” One shoulder lifted in a careless shrug. “I suppose I did, then. And what did you say?”
Caroline stared at him in disbelief. “I said yes, of course! Why else would I be here?”
“Ah,” he said, the faint tracing of a smile lifting one corner of his mouth. “But why did you say yes? You yourself just admitted we were strangers. I didn’t even know your name. Why would you ever accept such a proposal?”
Why indeed?
“Because – because I felt obligated, I suppose. One does not say no to a duke.”
“No, one does not,” he agreed. “And there you have it. The reason why I married you.”
“I…I am afraid I do not understand.”
“To be quite blunt, I need an heir. You see, my brother is the rather unscrupulous sort. Were he to inherit the ducal title I fear he would squander the estates and drain the coffers in a fortnight. Quicker if he could manage it. But in order to produce an heir, I need–”
“A wife,” Caroline whispered.
“Precisely,” he said with a nod, looking pleased that she’d finally caught on.
“But that…that still does not answer my original question. Was there something you saw in me?” she asked hopefully. “Something that drew you to me?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Well, I do like blondes.”
“Blondes,” she echoed hollowly.
“Indeed. Although I’ve nothing against brunettes. Or redheads, come to think of it. My first mistress was a redhead. Lovely woman.” His eyes narrowed. “And she never asked questions. Of course, I did not marry you just because of your hair color.”
; She breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank goodness. You see I rather hoped, with time, that we might come to care for–”
“I needed a young, obedient, malleable lady from good breeding stock. You fit the bill quite nicely on all accounts.”
Malleable?
Is that how he saw her? Something to be twisted and kneaded and formed into whatever shape he wished? Caroline felt the color drain from her cheeks as she untucked her leg from beneath her hip and stood up. Her foot tingled from being bent at an unnatural angle for so long but she ignored the uncomfortable sensation, too incensed by her husband’s words to even notice the pain.
“That – that is a horrible reason to marry someone!” she sputtered.
“Really?” Eric drawled, a hint of amusement glinting in his cool blue gaze. “Pray tell, what do you think is a good reason for marriage?”
“Friendship. Affection. Understanding.” She was tempted to say love, but her newfound courage only extended so far.
“Interesting,” he said softly. “Should I tell you why I think people marry?”
“Actually, I really do not–”
“Convenience. Nothing more and nothing less than the convenience of being with someone who can give you what you want. I want an heir. You want wealth and social standing. No need to make it more complicated than it has to be.” He stood up. “This conversation has lost its appeal. I bid you goodnight.” Something flickered in his gaze as he glanced down at her. Something that made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck tingle. Something almost…possessive. A trick of the light, she told herself. Eric wasn’t possessive of her. Truth be told he didn’t even seem to like her all that much.
She waited until he’d left to sink back down into the leather chair and draw both knees to her chin. It was clear now that she had made a horrible mistake by marrying the duke. She should have refused his suit when he first approached her, but she had been so dazzled at the prospect of being courted by one of the most powerful men in all of England that she had never considered what the repercussions might be.
Regency Christmas (Holiday Collection) Page 33
