Princess

by Alison Fraser

  ‘Don’t move!’ he shouted down at her.

  When he returned with the saddle over his arm, he was surprised to find she hadn’t. Deftly he strapped the leather to the animal’s back. In one fluid movement he mounted, and before Serena could guess what was in his mind, he stretched down and adroitly hoisted her on to the saddle in front of him.

  ‘Put me down!’ she commanded, her body going rigid.

  ‘Shut up and hang on, or so help me, I’ll land you on your backside in the mud!’ She gasped, opening her mouth to protest, and he forestalled her with, ‘And yes, I would dare.’

  He eased her into a more comfortable position, then gently pulled her back so she was forced to lean against him for support, before spurring the horse on. Even with two riders on its back, the horse was strong and fast, and when they reached open countryside Adam gave it its head. He wasn’t sure if his sense of exhilaration was caused by the horse’s speed or the small warm body curved into his.

  He took the direction she silently indicated, then almost spilled off when they went through a small patch of low-branched trees at the base of a long sloping hill, ducking his head just in time. He felt her shake with suppressed laughter and squeezed her hard as punishment. So Serena had a taste for danger as well as speed!

  At the top of the hill he reined in the horse. Reckoning that they were about four miles away from the house— and too far away for her to walk back—he lowered her gently to the ground, then slid off the saddle.

  Her hair tumbled in golden waves as she removed her riding hat. She was breathless and excited from the ride—and it hurt just to look at her.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she managed to articulate between breaths, but there was no malice in her words.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Heredity, I suppose,’ she quipped, her mouth quirking at the corners while the pleasure of the ride still lingered.

  ‘You’re quite a wit, Princess,’ Adam smiled.

  There was no mistaking the underlying bitterness in her snappy reply of, ‘Well, that’s an improvement on being considered half that quantity!’

  ‘Don’t!’ He caught her by the arm.

  ‘Don’t what?’ Confused by his urgency, she stayed her ground.

  ‘We were almost having a conversation. Don’t spoil it!’ Adam understood full well Serena’s behaviour over the previous fortnight; he needed to get through to her. ‘At my mother’s request, I went to my aunt’s funeral. Up until the reading of her will, where you gave a convincing performance of being exactly as Andrea stated, I’d never heard of you. I admit I considered following the course she suggested, and maybe that’s why she chose me as your guardian—because I was just hard enough to take the easy option and tidy you away in some institution without too many qualms.’ He still held her interest, but it was difficult to read more from her expression. ‘But from the first time you spoke to me, I have never viewed you as in any way mentally deficient—quite the opposite, in fact. You were confused, yes, and maybe a little wild in your thinking, but I suspect your experience with Andrea gave you the right to be.’

  Serena ignored the half-question in his last remark, but seemed to be reflecting on what he had been saying, her eyes staring into space. Or maybe she was playing dumb again? Adam exerted a slight pressure on her arm.

  ‘You advised Nancy to consult a psychiatrist, didn’t you?’

  Was it an accusation?—difficult to judge from the cool eyes trained on him once more.

  ‘You needed help, Princess,’ he gave the truth gently, but she was an agonisingly long time in coming back with a barely audible Yes. It was a start. ‘Maybe Simon Clarke turned out to be a bad choice, mm?’

  ‘He helped a little,’ she conceded warily, ‘but he was a bit... disappointing.’

  In what way disappointing? Adam speculated, but Serena moved away before he could press the point. Had she resented the personal interest his mother had hinted at in a letter? Or rejected Simon when he had failed to accept her revelations about the past at face value?

  Serena had wandered off towards a fallen tree. Adam followed and sat down beside her, taking a packet of cigarettes and lighter from his jacket. Lighting one, he inhaled deeply; he hadn’t felt this nervous since his first date with a girl.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ His hand swept the valley, rural England at its best, haphazard and rich with colour.

  ‘Yes... yes, it is,’ she stammered.

  Serena was coping with her own tension as Adam failed to live up to the image she had given him.

  ‘Have you painted it?’ he asked tentatively.

  ‘My... my father did,’ she admitted falteringly, and on impulse added, ‘And he did it too well for any effort of mine to stand comparison... my own standards, I mean.’

  Adam nodded his understanding, but he felt he had to give a little in order to receive any confidence. Not quite truthfully he confessed, ‘My own father was a financial genius. I admired and loved him a lot, but in the end I couldn’t follow him. Much to my family’s disgust I dropped out of my economics course at Cambridge and have held the dubious honour of black sheep ever since.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’ Her vehemence startled both of them, and Serena stammered under his searching appraisal, ‘I mean what you do... your writing, it’s more important than making money. Creating something for other people to enjoy.’

  The defensive gleam lingered in her eyes and warmed him, even while he forced himself not to make anything out of it.

  He teased her seriousness with a wry, ‘Even if it’s creating sensational garbage?’ She dropped her eyes away, and bending closer, Adam discerned colour flooding her high slanting cheekbones—totally unexpected, utterly entrancing when he intuitively determined its origin. Fleetingly he touched her face with the back of his hand and she swayed rather than jerked back from him.

  ‘Delightful though it is, your blush is unwarranted, Princess. Perhaps if you’d been around with your refreshingly candid opinion, I wouldn’t have sunk to such depths. But depths they were, and if anyone should be embarrassed by that film script, it’s the writer.’

  The frank admission brought Serena’s head up to catch the self-derision curving his mouth. His books, clever and articulate, had more than suggested that the writer was not enamoured with the human race, but she had been wrong in assuming that Adam Carmichael held himself in any higher esteem.

  ‘But if you knew, then why...’ she trailed off in her confusion.

  ‘A joke on the black side that backfired,’ he murmured obscurely. But when she still waited, her small head upturned to his, he tried to enlighten her without broaching on self-pity. ‘Imagine you do a painting, a gallery dismissed it as non-commercial, and in a fit of artistic pique you alter it to the sort of bargain basement print that makes you cringe. And guess what happens?’

  ‘They love it.’ Serena’s rueful smile held sympathy as she followed the analogy, but her, ‘I would have destroyed it,’ was emphatic.

  Adam had no answer for the youthful certainty confronting him. He looked away from her, his eyes travelling the valley.

  And Serena, sensing his sudden remoteness, was more than a little baffled by her reaction to it. She felt shut out and strangely resentful.

  ‘Why did you pretend in your letters that you liked Hollywood?’ she asked bluntly, almost demanding his attention.

  He did nothing about the hardness in his voice as he replied, ‘It’s a habit that grows on people round my dear mother—keeping her in the dark about the less savoury parts of one’s life. Only some of us are more adept at it than others, aren’t we?’ he finished on a sardonic note, then instantly regretted it as she made a move to rise.

  Serena gave up the uneven struggle to prise his fingers from around her arm and tried to disguise her hurt under a biting defensive reply of, ‘You’re full of clever remarks, aren’t you?’

  But it reached Adam and made him feel sick with himself as he groaned quietly, ‘I’m a blundering fool, aren’
t I?’ His apology was received with an ambiguous silence, confusion warring with suspicion. Neither was encouraging, and Adam knew if he had any sense he would leave it there. He hadn’t. ‘Look, Serena, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I understand your motives for hiding things from my mother—I’ve done it for years myself—but you don’t have to do it with me. I want to help you.’

  ‘Help?’ she repeated stiffly. His sudden return to gentleness was a trap. It had to be, so why was she waiting for it to spring? ‘What things am I hiding?’

  ‘You tell me, Princess,’ said Adam very quietly, slowly releasing his hold on her arm. Pressure would not work. Her face was very still and unreadable. ‘About Andrea.’

  Yesterday she wouldn’t even have wanted to believe the sensitivity she could see in his face, far less be tempted by it. She had to keep looking through him, not at him.

  ‘Andrea...’ She fixed her eyes on a point past his left shoulder. ‘Andrea who?’

  For a second Adam could have shaken her, but it passed under the certainty that behind the blank evasion there lay scars, as yet unhealed. Was he right to touch their rawness? He didn’t know.

  Serena didn’t resist as he laid the palm of his hand lightly against her cheek to bring her into the direct line of his vision, but then she didn’t seem to be registering his presence any more. He tried anyway, a quiet thread of persistence running through his tone.

  ‘OK, I’ll tell you what I know. A few years after your mother’s death, your father decides to return to England. He meets Andrea—a childless widow in her forties. They seem suited. Only where your father is thinking of a companion and mother for you, Andrea is looking for more than just affection.’

  ‘He tried!’ Serena burst out, eyes flaring with indignation, unable to let the implied criticism pass. ‘My father was kind and patient, but nothing he did ever satisfied your aunt!’

  There were overtones of the child Serena in her angry defence: and like a child where she loved, she did so passionately. Adam wondered how his aunt had killed that spirit.

  ‘Including getting rid of your beautiful mother’s portrait,’ he said at last. ‘Your mother was very beautiful. And your father loved her. Perhaps far too much for a second marriage to be wise. And my aunt was jealous —all that wouldn’t be easy for a young orphan to understand, Princess.’

  As an attempt at reasoning through the past it was well off the mark, for Serena struck his hand angrily away.

  ‘You know nothing about it!’

  ‘Then tell me,’ he demanded, rising with her, as she jumped up.

  ‘Your aunt was a devouring monster!’ she practically screamed before rudely turning her back on him.

  Adam felt desperate and reached out to spin her round towards him. He sounded harsh. ‘You’re never going to forgive me either, are you, for being related to Andrea?’

  ‘No—no, I’m not!’ Serena cried wildly, more out of chaos than reason as his hands tightened round her middle. Through the anger and bitterness broke a clamouring excitement at the spreading of his fingers on the flat of her stomach, crazily out of place in her feelings for him. ‘You’re hurting me, you brute!’ she lied.

  ‘Then stop struggling like a wildcat. Look at me!’ he ordered, his own control slipping fast. With one arm he pulled her closer, trapping her arms against his chest, and his other hand tangled in her fine hair, forcing her to obey him. ‘What do you see?’ he muttered tensely, sure that his features must be betraying his feelings for her.

  ‘I see six foot two of pure arrogance!’ Serena sneered recklessly, recognising only the hard male desire that burned in his eyes. ‘Is that how you get turned on, Adam Carmichael—showing off your strength to defenceless women?’

  ‘You blind little fool,’ Adam murmured deep in his throat. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to...’

  The lips, hard and searching, tried to articulate his emotion, for he was beyond words. A great hunger worked up inside him, but his need to deepen the kiss was thwarted by her clenched teeth, and he growled in his frustration, ‘Open your mouth.’ Her angry protest was stifled as he took advantage of it. The taste of her was sweet and intoxicating, causing the blood to surge to his brain, and miraculously the mouth under his began to move, tentatively answering his. He sensed her inexperience and the nature of his kiss changed, his lips gentle and persuasive as they sought to give reassurance as well as pleasure. Unprepared for even this shy response, his senses stirred unbearably. He started to draw away, but lost the good intention in her arms slowly stretching upwards to pull his mouth closer, asking for more while they trembled nervously in anticipation of it.

  But even with Serena straining on tiptoe and Adam bending to meet her, the kiss satisfied neither, and encircling her waist, he raised her till, she was level with his mouth, bracing her slight body against his. And what Serena lacked in experience, she made up for in instinct as she brushed her quivering mouth tantalisingly against his until hard male lips once more claimed hers, absorbing and draining her sweetness.

  It was a kiss Adam was to relive long after he lowered her gently to the ground, unable to take much more of her nearness. While some notion of decency was still remaining, he set the girl in his arms abruptly away from him, and felt crippled by the look in her eyes at his roughness.

  ‘Try to understand. I had to stop while I was still able to.’

  His appeal went unheard. Her lovely face was a mirror of her feelings as the hurt at his supposed rejection struggled with a deep shame at her own abandoned response to his lovemaking.

  Clinging to the belief that the perfect passion they had shared must have burned down the barriers between them, Adam put his arms out automatically to gather her protectively to him, and was caught unprepared for the violence of her reaction as she shoved him with all her strength. By the time he had regained his balance, mental and physical, she was running from him towards White Lightning. She had untied the reins loosely looped over the branch of a tree and was heaving herself up into the saddle before her intentions came fully home to him.

  ‘Get off the horse, Serena!’ Panic made his voice hard, as the horse skittered, nervous of the sudden movement; Adam placed himself in front of it, regardless of the very real danger of the horse shying and catching him a blow with its rearing hooves. ‘You’ll break your neck!’

  ‘As if you’d care!’ The broken cry made her sound young and painfully vulnerable.

  Making soothing noises to the horse, Adam quietened the animal sufficiently to come alongside, ready to grab the reins when he could. Inching his hand up the stallion’s long neck, he entreated softly, ‘Get down, Princess, please,’ as he recognised and gained a measure of relief from the flickering doubt in her eyes.

  He had almost reached the bridle when Serena brought her leg out and kicked him back from the horse, and whether by accident or design he was sent sprawling on the muddy ground.

  He watched her gallop down the hill, her hair streaming in the wind, making no attempt to slow the horse’s progress when they reached the belt of trees, and his fear for her fought his respect for her fearlessness.

  It took him a bare forty minutes to cover the four miles back to the house, and he was almost choked with the relief of finding White Lightning back in his stall, quietly munching a well-deserved breakfast. It quickly turned to anger when he was confronted by the old gardener, patently struggling to conceal his amusement at the master’s mud-splattered appearance.

  ‘Had a bit of an accident... sir?’

  ‘You could say that. Where’s Miss Templeton?’ Adam demanded with grim impatience.

  But Brocklehurst, enjoying what he accurately assumed to be the situation, was slow in answering, ‘Miss Serena’s gone to t’house.’

  ‘Has the animal been rubbed down?’

  ‘That he has, sir. Beautiful animal, but very strong,’ the old man muttered, running a fond eye over the muscular flesh, before offering another unsolicited but definite opinion. ‘Beg
ging your pardon, sir, but if I were you I wouldn’t let young miss ride ‘im too often.’

  ‘I don’t intend to.’ The disapproval in the other’s voice made Adam clench his teeth. ‘I’d better go and change.’

  ‘Aye, ‘tis muddy out after last night’s storm,’ Fred Brocklehurst commented, and because he was fond of a bit of harmless mischief, added, ‘ ‘Twas surprised when young miss told me you wanted to walk back.’

  Adam could not trust himself to speak and walked away before the gardener could glimpse the thunder in his expression which would have had the old man hastily revising the word harmless. Fury carried him across the yard and up the stairs, but instead of going to his room Adam made for the west wing, not bothering to wait for a response to his peremptory knock. He firmly closed the door behind him, and it said much for his swift reactions that he missed the flying hairbrush that greeted his arrival.

  ‘Temper, temper,’ he drawled, leaning negligently against the door. He wasn’t going to let the girl turn him inside out—not this time.

  Swivelling completely round from the dressing table, Serena hurled her next barrage verbally. ‘If you’re not out of my room in one minute I shall scream the house down!’

  ‘Stop being so hysterical,’ he summarily dismissed the threat, folding his arms. ‘You’re fully clothed... unfortunately.’

  ‘If you’d come in a couple of minutes ago,’ she retorted blushingly, ‘I wouldn’t have been.’

  ‘In that case I’ll have to run quicker, Princess,’ he returned smoothly,’ the next time you decide I’m in need of exercise.’

  It disconcerted her. Serena had expected him to be mad, but then she had also been confident of being away from the house long before he arrived back. He must have run all the way—but why? Not to treat her with this lazy indulgence, she was sure.