Slightly Sinful

by Mary Balogh

  Alleyne’s valet was suddenly transformed into the army sergeant he had once been before the boy’s surprised eyes.

  “Do you, lad?” he said. “And if Mr. Renny is still asleep on account of he was working so hard yesterday, you will take your orders from whoever will set you to doing your proper work what earns your wages from the baron here. Stop worrying your flea bites now and stand to attention.”

  Amazingly, the boy did, just like a private soldier under the critical eye of his sergeant.

  “Look lively now, lad,” Strickland said amiably, “and find them saddles.”

  Alleyne chuckled, though he sobered almost instantly. It must be Weston’s whip that had stopped cracking, he thought. The man’s illness had caused a slacking off in the stables and apparently in the kitchen too. He could well believe it, judging by the quality of the dinner last evening—a meal that Weston had merely pecked at, he had noticed. It was doubtful he had always run a sloppy estate. There was no air of long neglect about the place.

  Mounting the horse five minutes later proved every bit as difficult as he had anticipated. After a few abortive attempts and a refusal to allow the sergeant to hoist him up, he solved the problem by mounting awkwardly from the right side of the horse and therefore having to do little more with his left leg than swing it over the horse’s back. Fortunately, once he was mounted, the leg felt almost comfortable.

  “Do you realize, Strickland,” he asked as he gathered the reins into his hands, “that this must have been the very last thing I was doing before I fell off in the Forest of Soignés and knocked my wits and my memory clear out of my head?”

  “But it is clear to see that you was born in the saddle, sir,” Strickland said, standing back as the horse, which doubtless had not been ridden for a while, pranced and sidled and snorted skittishly.

  Alleyne had not even really noticed that the animal was not standing still and docile. It was true, he thought, cheered immensely. He had responded to the horse and controlled it without conscious thought, as if he had reached deep into long familiar skills acquired during his other life.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll just take a turn outside the yard.”

  It felt so astonishingly good to be on horseback that he knew riding was something he had been doing all his life. He took the horse out behind the stables and cantered across a wide lawn there, trying to picture himself riding with other people, racing with them, jumping fences and hedges with them, hunting with them. He tried to picture himself riding into battle—at the head of a cavalry charge or directing an infantry advance. He tried to recapture those final moments in the forest, when his leg would have been hurting like a thousand devils, when he would have been worried both about the letter and about the woman waiting for him at the Namur Gates. He tried to picture what it was that had caused him to fall off and bang his head hard enough to dislodge everything that was inside it.

  But all he had succeeded in doing, he thought as he made his way back to the stables, was give himself a faint headache.

  Rachel was there, talking with Sergeant Strickland and eyeing the other horse with obvious apprehension. She was wearing a serviceable blue carriage dress and a hat that was tipped pertly forward over her swept-up golden hair. She was standing in a patch of sunlight, and without the hat she would again have looked like his golden angel.

  He felt a twinge of discomfort. Yesterday had not proceeded quite as he had visualized it. He had a nasty suspicion that Weston was not the cold monster Rachel had described and that she was not as indifferent to him as she pretended to be—or as perhaps she really thought she was.

  “Good morning.” He doffed his hat and nodded to her.

  “Good morning,” she said. But as he rode closer and his horse loomed over her, he could see her eyes widen and her face turn pale. “Oh, no, I could not. I really could not. It is no good. If I had learned as a child, I might have been a tolerably accomplished horsewoman by now. But I cannot start learning at the age of twenty-two. Anyway, it is time you got down from there before you hurt your leg again.”

  Incredible as it seemed to him that she could have lived her whole life without riding, he realized that he could not simply expect her to hop up into the sidesaddle on the other horse and ride off into the sunrise. She might not even get up onto that horse alone today. But she would ride. By Jove she would.

  He discovered a stubborn streak in himself.

  “You need to see life from the perspective of a horse’s back,” he said. “And then you will feel such exhilaration that you will know there is nothing to compare with it.”

  “I believe you without feeling the need to prove it,” she said. “Now I am going back to the house.”

  He sidled his mount to block her way.

  “Not until you have proved to me that you are no coward,” he said. “You will ride up with me first. You will be quite safe. Despite what I did to myself in Belgium, I will not let you fall. I promise.”

  “Ride up with you?” She tipped back her head and their eyes met and held.

  Ah, yes, he could see her point though she had not put it into words. Holding her hands against his chest last evening had raised his temperature a notch. Knowing that she was sleeping in a room separated from his own by three doorways but no doors had kept him awake half the night. And now he was inviting her to ride up with him? Actually he had gone beyond inviting her, though. He had challenged her.

  Well, so be it. He had decided that she was going to learn to ride, and so learn to ride she must.

  “Normally I would suggest that you set your foot on my left boot so that I could lift you up here,” he said. “But, alas, I am unable to display such manly strength for your admiration today. Strickland, do you feel able to lift Lady Smith up here?”

  She uttered something that seemed like a strange combination of a shriek and a squawk.

  “I do, sir,” the sergeant said. “If you will forgive me the liberty, missy. Mr. Smith—Sir Jonathan, I should remember to say, just as I ought to have remembered to call you Lady Smith. Sir Jonathan will keep you safe once you are up there. It is plain to see that he was born in the saddle, as I just told him a while ago. And I daresay you will enjoy it once you are up.”

  Since Sergeant Strickland himself regarded her in something of the nature of an angel, it was doubtful he would have proceeded further against her express wishes. But fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—he acted fast, and even while she was opening her mouth, doubtless to protest, he was hoisting her upward with two large hands splayed on either side of her waist, and depositing her on the horse’s back before the saddle. Alleyne’s arms closed about her to steady her.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” And she clutched at him in panic.

  “Relax,” he said, tightening his hold on her. “The only danger can come from your fighting me. Relax, my love.” He grinned into her wide, dazed eyes.

  “There you go, missy—Lady Smith,” Sergeant Strickland said. “You don’t look like you was born in the saddle, but you do look like you was born to be in Sir Jonathan’s arms.”

  He was chuckling over his own witticism as he turned away and disappeared inside the stable building—probably to harass the grooms and whip them into shape, Alleyne guessed.

  In the meantime some of the tension had gone out of Rachel’s body, though she sat very still indeed. Even her head did not move as she stared straight ahead.

  “You are probably pretending,” he said, “that you are sitting in a parlor, trying to decide whether to pick up your embroidery or a book.”

  “I will never forgive you for this,” she said, her voice prim and tense.

  He chuckled as he turned the horse out of the stable yard again.

  He might never forgive himself either. He could feel her body heat all along his front. He could smell gardenia.

  WHEN ONE LOOKED UP WITH ONE’S FEET FIRMLY planted on mother earth, a rider did not look so very far off the ground. But when one was that ri
der, or at least sitting up before the rider, which was more or less the same thing, the ground looked alarmingly distant.

  Rachel was horribly aware of empty space ahead of her and below her, and also of the same amount of empty space at her back. If the horse had stayed very, very still, she might have gathered her wits about her after a few moments, but of course it was not in the nature of horses to stand still. It sidestepped and pranced and snorted.

  And then it moved even more. It swiveled about with much clopping of hooves on the cobbles, and proceeded on its way out of the stable yard.

  At any moment, she was convinced she was going to pitch forward or topple backward, and someone was going to have to come and scrape up her mortal remains. Or perhaps she would wake up somewhere several days hence with a lump the size of an egg on the side of her head and no memory—not even of this, her first ride in sixteen years.

  Jonathan’s chest looked reassuringly solid, she thought, seeing it with her peripheral vision only a few inches from her left arm. She could lean against him if she chose and feel relatively safe. But she disdained to show such weakness. She consciously straightened her spine. One of his arms was wrapped about her waist, she realized for the first time. Even if she leaned back, he would stop her from falling off. His other arm was holding the reins, but it touched her at the waist in front and felt like a solid enough barrier between her and the ground below.

  In fact, she could feel his body heat and smell his cologne or his soap or his shaving soap.

  And there was something else preventing her from slipping backward. It was his right thigh, she understood suddenly, pressed to her derriere. The inside of his left thigh was pressed against her knees.

  It was strange how she became aware of the man long after the horse and the danger. Though not so very long, actually. They were only just outside the stable yard, and they were turning again, away from the front of the house, along beside the lake, and onto a long back lawn that stretched to a line of trees in the distance.

  “This is all quite pointless,” she told him. “You will never make a rider of me.”

  “Yes, I will,” he said. “I have decided that you will learn, and I have also decided that I must be a stubborn man who imposes his will on all around him. I must have been a general, or a colonel at the very least. Perhaps I was a close comrade of Colonel Leavey and Colonel Streat.”

  She did not turn her head—she dared not—but she knew he was grinning. He was enjoying himself, just as he had yesterday, with not a care in the world.

  “I daresay all your men hated you,” she said nastily.

  He laughed. “You cannot live in the country and not ride,” he told her. “It would be an utter absurdity.”

  “I have lived all my life except for the last few months in London,” she said, “and I will live the rest of my life there after this is all over.”

  “What do you plan to do there?” he asked her.

  “I will find employment again,” she said. “Or, if I have my inheritance, I will live on the proceeds of my jewels after I have paid my friends back what they are owed. What are you doing?”

  “Urging this mount from a slow crawl to a sedate walk,” he said.

  “And you seriously believe,” she asked him, “that you are going to persuade me to do this myself one day, all alone on my own horse?”

  “I was hoping it would be today,” he said. “But I can see that I was overoptimistic in having a horse saddled for you. It will have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked him again.

  “Moving into a brisk walk.” He chuckled. “Rachel, relax. I am not going to ride neck or nothing with you, and I am not going to jump any gates or hedges. We are merely going to trot across this grassy stretch and back so that you can get a feel for riding. I am not going to let you come to any harm.”

  “Trot?” Even to her own ears her voice sounded mournful.

  The morning air was refreshingly cool, she realized suddenly. She had noticed it as soon as she set foot outside the house, but now she could feel it moving against her face, and as she got up the courage to unknot her neck muscles and turn her head to look about, she could see how lovely the lake was to one side of the lawn, its waters still and dark green from the reflections of the trees on the far bank. And this lawn was lovely too even though the grass had not been cut very recently. Daisies and buttercups and clover carpeted it, making it more meadow than lawn. The horse disturbed butterflies and other insects as it passed. Colorful butterfly wings fluttered above the green and white and yellow carpet of the ground. Birds flew overhead. The horse’s hooves thudded rhythmically on the turf.

  Rachel had a sudden surging memory of her six-year-old self riding up before Uncle Richard on the streets of London, and once in Hyde Park, when she had believed that riding must surely be the most exciting activity on this earth. Her childhood self had surely been right, she thought now at the same moment as she realized that they were indeed trotting—or perhaps cantering was the more appropriate word.

  She heard herself laugh, and she turned her head to share her exuberance with the man beside her. He gazed back at her with very dark, unsmiling eyes.

  She did not say anything—her stomach was too busy performing some sort of somersault. Neither did he.

  She turned her head away again in some confusion and looked about her once more. Her exuberance had not diminished, but added to it now was an acute physical awareness of Jonathan Smith. She wondered briefly if she would have had the nerve to do what she had done with him in Brussels if she had seen him dressed and on his feet or on horseback first and had realized what a very virile, vital man he was when he was not laid low by injuries.

  She surely would have dashed from his room and never returned. Though perhaps not. She had not lain with him because he seemed weak and puny, after all, had she?

  She had simply been mad, that was all. Irresponsibly insane. Insanely irresponsible.

  And then she had agreed to this wild charade.

  Once upon a time she had considered herself an almost drearily sensible girl. She had had to be in order to hold together her father’s household.

  But she did not dwell upon such thoughts. She was, against all the odds, enjoying herself. The distant trees were moving up far too fast. Soon they would be turning back to the stables, and her first lesson—if it could be called that—would be over. She was reluctant to admit even to herself that she would be sorry.

  “Well?” he asked, breaking a lengthy silence as they drew near to the trees. He eased the horse to a walk.

  “The ride is quite pleasant, I must confess,” she said as primly as she could. “But I know beyond any doubt that I could not do this alone.”

  “Yes, you could and will,” he said.

  But he did not immediately turn back, as she had expected. He rode closer to the trees and then slowly among them, bending his head as she did when they seemed uncomfortably close to a branch. At the edge of the wood the grass was long, but then most of it disappeared, discouraged from growing, no doubt, by the thickness of leaves and branches overhead.

  They did not proceed very far, but they could both hear the sound of running water when they stopped.

  “Ah, I suspected as much,” he said. “I believe there must be a river flowing through these woods to feed the lake. Shall we investigate?”

  “The trees grow rather thickly here,” she pointed out.

  “Then we must go on foot,” he told her. “Stay there. You will be quite safe for a moment.”

  And he swung down to the ground before wincing noticeably.

  “You forgot about your wound, did you not?” she scolded while feeling very unsafe herself. “And you do not even have your cane with you.”

  But he was grinning again when he reached up and lifted her down, though she could see from his gritted teeth that the effort was causing him considerable pain.

  “I am mortally sick of my infirmity, Rachel,�
�� he said, “and of propelling myself about with a cane as if I were an octogenarian with gout.” He was tethering the horse to a tree as he spoke. “Let us find this river.”

  It was not far away, which was a fortunate thing, as Jonathan was limping. The view was well worth the short trek, though. The river was not very wide, but it was flowing downhill here, down a slope of land to their right. The slope was not steep enough to cause a waterfall, but nevertheless the water was cascading down over stones of varying sizes and foamed white in places. With trees growing to the bank on either side, it was a breathtakingly lovely sight. But there was more than sight. There was the rushing, bubbling sound of the water and the smell of it and of the greenery surrounding it. There was the sound of birds, hundreds of them, it seemed, though they were all hidden from view among the branches of the trees.

  To Rachel, who had lived all of her life in a city, it was like a piece of heaven. She was dazzled. She felt rather as if a large fist had collided with her stomach, robbing her of breath.

  “Shall we sit down?” he suggested.

  They were standing, she realized, on a large rock, around which the water flowed fast—and it was flat on top. She could also see that his left hand was pressed against the top of his thigh.

  “Foolish man,” she said. “You should still be in bed.”

  “Indeed?” He favored her with his haughty look—his eyebrows raised, his eyes appearing to be staring along the length of his prominent nose. “With you as my nurse, Rachel? I do believe the innocence of those days is gone forever. Don’t fuss at me. The leg is healing and I will not coddle it.”

  He lowered himself carefully to the rock, his left leg stretched out before him, his right bent at the knee. He draped one arm over it while he propped the other behind him. Rachel sat down beside him, as far away from him as the rock allowed, and hugged her raised knees with both arms. Sometimes he seemed to be so full of laughter and mischief that she almost forgot he was also a man who felt the constant threat of terror.

  He was not Sir Jonathan Smith. She did not know his name. Neither did he.