The bay had other ideas. It reared and lashed out. Lancelot was nearly unseated. His left arm flailed—his crop came down hard on the black’s rump.
The black shot into a gallop.
Gyles lunged for the reins and missed. One glance at Francesca bobbing awkwardly on the black’s back was enough. She was unbalanced and heading for a fall.
Cursing freely, he flicked a scorching glance at Lancelot. “You blasted fool!” He set the grey after the black, leaving Lancelot still struggling with his mount.
Gyles didn’t spare another thought for Lancelot, not even for retribution, not for anything beyond the small figure bouncing as she struggled to retain her seat. Sidesaddle, she had no room for error on a hunter. Jouncing as she was, she had no hope of controlling such a strong beast. The downs thereabouts were uneven—the horse’s pounding strides would jar all the way through her, wrenching her arms, weakening her hold on the reins.
Until she fell.
Gyles refused to think of it—to think of the occasional rock embedded in the sward. Refused to remember his father, lying so still on the ground.
Shutting his mind, he gave chase. And prayed she’d have the wit and the strength to hang on.
Francesca gritted her teeth, vainly trying to stop her breath being slammed out of her with every stride the black took. She’d had a plan in case one of Charles’s hunters ever did run away with her: hang on until the horse tired. All very well in the forest, where the paths were flat but twisting, slowing a horse, tiring it quickly. Here on the open downs, the black was just getting into his stride—he could run without restriction.
The dips and folds meant little to the horse; they meant much more to her. Her arms felt like they were being wrenched from their sockets and still the horse flew. Only her boot firm in the stirrup and her leg locked around the saddlebow allowed her to keep her seat.
She wouldn’t be able to do so much longer.
The thought crystallized in her mind. In that instant, she heard the heavy thud of hooves behind her, closing, slowly closing.
Gyles.
She locked her fingers more firmly on the reins, tried to balance her weight, to ease the jolts that with every stride were shaking her like a rag doll.
She could no longer draw a full breath—her lungs had forgotten how. Panic clawed at the back of her throat. Heat rushed up her nape.
Glancing ahead, she saw a series of folds lying like shadows over the green. Up and down, up and down—she’d never make it. Never retain her seat through that.
The grey was still closing. She couldn’t risk a glance back to see.
Dragging in a breath, she threw what little strength she had left into hauling back on the reins. In vain. The black had his head down, and she didn’t have the strength to fight him.
The grey’s head drew alongside.
“Kick your feet free—now!”
She heard Gyles’s command—pushed aside the thought that with her feet free, she’d surely fall—and did as he said.
In the instant her boots cleared the leather, she felt his arm around her waist, felt him seize her. She dropped the reins and pushed away from the saddle. Reached for him.
He lifted her, swung her over, pulled her to him.
She grabbed, clung, sobbed as she held fast, hands fisting in his shirt. She curled herself into him, pressed herself to him, her cheek to his chest, her boots and skirts flowing over one hard thigh.
Safe.
Gyles slowed the grey gradually—no showy abrupt halt that might dislodge Francesca. All he wanted was to hold her and let the reality of her safety sink into his bones. Let his panic and fear subside and sink back behind his defenses again.
Again. Only this time had been much worse.
She was still breathing brokenly when he halted the grey; she was shaking with shock, as was he. He wrapped his arms around her, set his cheek to her hair, and held her, then he tightened his arms briefly before easing his hold and trying to look into her face—
“I say!” Lancelot skidded his horse to a halt beside them. “Is everything all right?”
Gyles lifted his head. “You witless oaf! If you had an ounce of brain to your name—”
Francesca listened. Gyles’s tone scorned, his words lashed. She agreed with every one. She was grateful he was there to deliver them, because she didn’t have the strength, the breath, to do the occasion justice. She concentrated on breathing, on listening to her heart, and his, slow. Concentrated on the fact that they were both still whole. Still together.
As the tremors racking her faded, she shifted her head, registering the drift of Gyles’s tirade, approving his tack—that of the sense and responsibility Lancelot should have shown, that instead he’d been grossly irresponsible, that through silly, childish behavior, he’d placed her at considerable risk.
She glanced at Lancelot—and realized Gyles’s comments, pointed though they were, were glancing off Lancelot’s self-conceit.
He waited for Gyles to cease speaking, then contemptuously waved. “Yes, very well, but I didn’t mean it to happen. Lady Chillingworth knows I didn’t. And it’s not as if she got hurt.”
Francesca raised her head. “I’m unhurt because Lord Chillingworth was with me. If he hadn’t been, courtesy of your stupidity, I might well be dead!”
Lancelot paled. Francesca continued, “You’re a child, Lancelot—you play at being an adult, but it’s all a mask, a pose.” She waved at the rise from which they’d come. “Back there, you heard only what you wanted to hear and behaved like the spoiled brat you are. Now, again, you’re doing the same, thinking our words beneath your consideration.
“You’re wrong. Behavior matters. Who you really are behind the mask matters. You will never succeed in life, let alone the ton, until you pay attention to what is, rather than playing an affected charade.” She gestured dismissively. “Now begone! I do not wish to set eyes on you again, not until you gain in maturity.”
His face another mask, this one more fragile than his usual Byronic imitation, Lancelot gathered his reins.
“One word of warning.” Gyles’s tone was a warning in itself. “Do not attempt to call at the Castle until I, or my wife, give you leave.”
Lancelot glanced at Gyles. And blanched. He bowed, wheeled his horse circumspectly, and cantered off.
Francesca blew out a breath and dropped her head back against Gyles’s chest. “He is brainless, that one.”
“I fear so.” For a long moment, they simply sat and let time pass. Then Gyles said, “Incidentally, you will not again ride one of my hunters.”
Francesca leaned back to look into his face. “I have no wish to ride any of your hunters ever again.”
Gyles humphed. “We’ll have to get you a second mount.”
“No—Regina is enough. I’ll likely ride less than every day, so if we have another horse just for me, someone else will have to exercise her.” She wriggled around to sit facing forward between Gyles’s thighs.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Now what do we do about the black?”
“He’ll come in by himself. If he hasn’t returned in an hour, Jacobs’ll send out a groom.” One arm locked about Francesca’s waist, Gyles set the grey cantering back to the escarpment.
They said nothing as they crossed the rolling downs, then headed down a track that joined the road close by the Castle’s gates. When they turned into the park and the trees closed about them, Gyles let the grey walk. Leaves crunched under its heavy hooves. Above them, bare branches formed a skeletal canopy against the grey sky.
He should have felt shaken to his core. Instead, he felt victorious, deeply content with his wife safe and warm in his arms. He glanced down at her face, studied her profile. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
She glanced up, emerald eyes wide, then she smiled. “I was frightened and shaken, but now . . .” Her smile deepened. Lifting a hand to his cheek, she turned in his arms and drew his lips to hers. She kissed him, ge
ntly, long and lingeringly. Then she drew back and looked into his eyes. “Thank you for saving me.”
He smiled. Looking ahead, he steered the grey toward the stable.
The next morning, Gyles went riding alone, leaving Francesca asleep, warm and sated in her bed. He rode along the river to the bridge, inspected the new trusses, then rode up to the downs.
Some called the landscape bleak, mile upon mile of emptiness with only the call of larks high above to puncture its loneliness. Today, that suited him—he needed time to think. Time to reflect on the changes in his life, to try to understand them.
He hadn’t imagined marriage would cause such change, such inner upheaval. Marriage to Francesca had. He’d known from first sight that she was potentially unsettling, yet unsettled was not what he felt. She spoke to him—the man not the earl, the barbarian not the gentleman—and he, most unexpectedly, had become accustomed to that. He wasn’t sure what having her in his life was doing to his wilder self. Perhaps she was taming the barbarian.
He inwardly snorted, and thought of the day before.
Thought of all he’d felt when he’d seen her bobbing wildly on the back of the runaway black. His old fear had risen, sharp, intense—the fear of having her fall and die like his father. Yet, along with the fear, this time had come resolution, the determination to save her, the conviction that he could, and would.
And he had.
Yesterday he’d lived the difference between being thirty-five and powerful, not seven and helpless. He felt as if old demons had been vanquished. Ironic that he owed Lancelot Gilmartin’s foolishness for that.
He slowed the grey as the escarpment drew near. He set the huge horse down the track to the Castle, cantering down the slope. Almost immediately he sensed an odd kick in the horse’s gait. Reining in, he dismounted. A quick inspection confirmed one rear shoe was loose.
Patting the horse’s neck, Gyles drew the reins over his head. “Come on, old son—let’s walk.” It wasn’t that far to the stables, and he still had plenty to ponder.
Like love, and loving.
Yesterday had demonstrated how deep were the waters into which he’d drifted, yet he still had his head above the waves. He cared for her, of course, and she seemed content with that, with the concessions he’d made. He’d let her into his life—he paused and reconsidered: bit by bit she’d won her way into his life, if truth be told. They’d come to an amicable arrangement, one that fell short of him committing to love.
Was that enough? Enough to keep her loving him?
Eyes on the ground, he walked down the track, and admitted he didn’t know. Her resolution on the battlements on the morning after their wedding still rang in his mind.
One thing he did know—he wanted her love, wanted her loving him, now and forever. The barbarian within had seized that prize and was not about to let go.
The image of the first time he’d seen her, the fact that he’d wanted her from that moment, led his mind to his mistake, to his initial perception of Franni—to the fact he’d been idiot enough to imagine she would make him a suitable wife to the point he’d thought it was she he was marrying.
God forbid. Thankfully, fate had.
He’d been as arrogantly foolish as Lancelot in his approach to finding his bride, but fate had taken pity on him, overriding his machinations to plant the right candidate at the altar beside him. And arrange matters so that, despite her temper, she’d been agreeable to marrying him. Agreeable to loving him.
He’d been so wrong about his bride—was he also wrong in refusing to love her? In not allowing what could be between them, what she wanted to be between them, to grow?
Fate had been so right over the matter of his wife. Did he dare to trust in fate again over the nature of their marriage?
Blowing out a long breath, he turned down the last stretch of track. Beside him, the grey slowed. Gyles looked up.
A yard ahead, a leather strap was stretched across the path just above knee height, secured around tree trunks on either side.
It was a leather rein from some carriage harness. Gyles halted before it. He tugged—it wasn’t taut, but didn’t have much give. He looked at the grey, judging where the strap would hit. He tested the leather, tested the knots securing it. Thought of what would have happened if he’d come down the path at a canter.
Or up the path at a gallop.
Frowning, he untied the strap from one tree trunk, rolling it in his hand as he crossed to the other tree.
He was the principal user of the path. Other than him, only Francesca rode this way. When exercising his horses, his grooms used the track along the river where they cantered under Jacobs’s watchful eye.
The implication was obvious. “Who?” and “Why?” were less so.
He had no local enemies that he knew of . . . except, perhaps, Lancelot Gilmartin. Glancing at the leather rolled in his hand, Gyles stuffed it into his pocket, then caught the grey’s reins and continued down the track.
Despite the boy’s foolishness, he couldn’t believe it of Lancelot. Such cold-bloodedness seemed unlikely—and he’d certainly have considered that Francesca might be the one caught, and surely he wouldn’t want that. Then again, given her verbal dissection of his character . . . could youthful adoration turn so quickly to hate?
But if not Lancelot, then who? He was involved in political schemes which others vehemently opposed, yet he couldn’t imagine any of the opposing camp employing such tactics. That was too fanciful for words.
He pulled the rein out of his pocket and examined it again. It was damp. It had rained last night but not since dawn. The rein had been strung there at least overnight. Possibly for longer. He thought back to the last time anyone had used the path. He and Charles had gone riding the first morning of their visit. After that, he and Francesca had gone by other ways.
Gyles reached the stable yard. “Jacobs!”
Jacobs came running. Gyles waited until he’d handed the grey to a stableboy before showing Jacobs the rein.
“It could be one of ours—heaven knows we’ve heaps lying about.” Jacobs strung the leather between his hands. “I really couldn’t be sure. Where was it?”
Gyles told him.
Jacobs looked grim. “I’ll have the lads keep a lookout. Whoever put it there might come back to check.”
“Possibly, but I doubt it. Let me know immediately if you or the lads see anyone or anything unusual.”
“Aye, m’lord.”
“And during the Harvest Festival, I want the stables closed off, and watched.”
“Aye—I’ll see to it.”
Gyles headed for the house, trying to dismiss the notion that had popped into his head. The conundrum of how a stone had become embedded in his wife’s mount’s hoof when the horse hadn’t been out. So the next time she’d been out, Francesca had ridden one of his hunters, a horse she couldn’t easily manage.
He’d been with her and they’d ridden out by a different route, but the scenario could so easily have been different. She could have gone riding by herself and taken the path up the escarpment.
Flexing his shoulders, he tried to push the resulting vision aside. It hadn’t happened, and all was still well.
That, he tried to tell himself, was all that mattered.
Striding up to the side door, he hauled it open and went inside.
Chapter 15
The days leading to their Harvest Festival were filled with activity. Gyles spent much of the time within sight of Francesca, more to appease the brooding barbarian than from any conviction she was in danger. But while in his sight, she was safe—and keeping her in sight was no hardship.
His house came alive, filled with frenzied footmen; he was entertained to see Irving succumb to the pleasant panic. Even Wallace was seen hurrying, an unprecedented sight. Yet most of his mind remained on Francesca, his senses attuned to every nuance of her voice, to the tilt of her head as she considered some point, to the swish of her skirts as she hurried past. She wa
s everywhere—in the kitchens one minute, in the forecourt the next.
And every night she came to his arms, happy and content and very willing to share all she was with him.
He tried, once, to settle with a news sheet. After reading the same paragraph five times and not taking in one word, he surrendered and went to see what Francesca was up to in the conservatory.
His mother, Henni, and Horace had arrived; he heard their voices as he strolled into the glass and stone edifice built out from the house beyond the library. With Francesca, they were sitting about a wrought-iron table positioned to make the most of the morning light.
His mother saw him.
“There you are, dear.” She held up her face; he bent and kissed her cheek. “Francesca has been telling us of all that’s planned.”
“I’ve volunteered to oversee the archery contests.” Horace squared his shoulders. “Did that years ago for your father. Quite enjoyed it.”
Gyles nodded and looked at Henni.
“Your mother and I will be roaming the crowd, making sure all is as it should be.”
“There’ll be so many here”—Francesca glanced up at him—“you and I won’t be able to be everywhere.”
“True.” He stood by Francesca’s chair, his hand on its back, and listened to her plans. He’d heard then before and approved them all; he listened not to her words but the eagerness in her voice as she recited the day’s schedule.
“By tomorrow evening, all should be in readiness.”
Henni set down her cup. “A pity you’ll have to wait until the morning to put out the trestles and boards, but it was ever the same. A Festival at this time of year can’t expect to be other than damp.”
“With luck, the day’ll be fine.” Horace stood. “Usually was, as I recall.”
“Indeed. The whole estate will be praying for a fine day—I haven’t seen such excitement for years.” Lady Elizabeth rose and kissed Francesca’s cheek. “We’ll leave you to your preparations.”
Francesca and Henni rose, too.
“Don’t forget—if you need any help, you have only to send a footman across the park.” Henni squeezed Francesca’s hand, then turned to the door leading outside just as a large shadow filled the doorway.
All About Passion Page 27
