by Lynne Barron
He followed her gaze to the window. Sure enough, the lady was leading her horse across the crowded stable yard. Nick stepped to the window and watched as she stopped to chat with a footman and shooed away the stable boy who came to take the reins from her hands.
“I will murder her.” He heard Lady Margaret’s words behind him. “The girl is as stubborn and headstrong as the day is long. Spoiled is what she is.”
“My goodness, Lady Morris, who is she?” Veronica asked.
“Never mind,” Margaret muttered.
She was a goddess stolen from the heavens and dropped in the middle of the stable yard in a beam of sunlight, her fiery hair whipping around her in the autumn wind. Petite and lithe in a crisp white shirt and short black coat over a pair of dark brown riding breeches tucked into tall black boots. In her hand she held a black hat that she tapped repeated against her leg as she spoke to the footman.
“Excuse me, ladies.” Nick bowed and turned, weaving his way through the other guests and out the door.
He arrived in the yard in time to see the woman leading her black beast into the stables and followed her. The stables were dim and quiet, the air redolent with hay and manure. Away from the wind, the air was warm and moist.
“You’re a devil, you are,” a woman crooned softly from the far end of the cavernous barn. Nick froze as the husky voice washed over him.
“You’d best learn some manners if you hope to charm the ladies.” The words were accompanied by a throaty chuckle.
He followed the husky voice down the aisle until he came to the last stall. She’d shed her coat and was bent down examining the horse’s forelock, her glorious dark red hair falling like a curtain over her shoulder, hiding her face. Nick took in the curve of her back in the fine linen shirt and her rounded bottom in trousers that fit like a glove.
“One morning early I went out,” she began to sing softly as she massaged the horse’s leg and the pungent scent of mint liniment wafted on the air. Her voice was dark and rich, tinted with a soft Irish brogue. “On the shore of Loch Lein, the leafy trees of summertime, and the warm rays of the sun.”
As she sang she massaged her way up the beast’s leg onto his shoulder, her small hands firmly pressing into muscle and sinew.
“As I wandered through the townlands, and the luscious grassy plains, who should I meet but a beautiful maid.” She straightened and moved her hands over the horse’s neck, her fingers deftly combing through his inky mane.
Nick was transfixed by her rich voice and the sight of her fingers softly caressing the horse’s neck and up between his ears. The black bent his neck and blew a breath against her shoulder and she laughed before leaning forward to sing into his ear, “At the dawning of the day.”
“What’s that you’re singing?” Nick asked.
“Oh,” she cried in surprise as she spun around.
Nick sucked in a shocked breath. Standing before him was the brightest woman he’d ever seen. Her hair blazed like flames, tumbling over her shoulders and down her back in a riot of tangled curls. Her skin glowed bronze in the afternoon light that washed over her from the high window in the stall, freckles dancing over her nose and across her cheeks. Her eyes flashed, as green as spring leaves, surrounded by dark lashes. She wasn’t beautiful in any traditional sense of the word. She was too vibrant, too dazzling, too earthy for true beauty.
“Hullo,” she greeted with a wide smile. Nick found himself unable to look away from her mouth. Good God, what a mouth. Her lips were full and lush, carnal. Images of her lips, her mouth on him flashed through his mind, heating his blood in an instant.
“Cat got your tongue?” she asked when he stood still and silent before her.
“Something like,” Nick replied with a chuckle as he stepped into the stall. “That’s a beautiful horse you’ve got there.”
“And doesn’t he know it.” She laughed up into his face when he stopped before her and reached out to drag his hand down the neck she’d recently caressed. “Danny Boy’s a rare one. Da bought him from a man in Cumberland for a song. He’ll be dancing attendance on the ladies in no time.”
So, the stable master’s daughter after all.
“Lucky Danny Boy,” Nick replied. “He’ll be living the life, his pick of the mares, and a beautiful woman rubbing him down and singing his praises.”
“Jealous, are you? It’s not so different from the life on an English gentleman as far as I can tell.”
Nick chuckled at her audacity. “Is that how you see us?”
“Aren’t you here to find a broad mare and commence filling your stable with little ones to carry on the name?”
“You’ve got us all figured out, have you?” Nick stepped forward until he was close enough feel the heat of her, smell the scent of vanilla and lemon and animal that floated around her. She didn’t step back, but held her ground, her smile inviting as she tilted her head back to look up at him.
“That I have,” she agreed boldly.
“And what about you?” he murmured. “If you’re not a broad mare in this scenario, does that make you the beautiful woman rubbing the stallion down and singing his praises?”
She shook her head as laughter erupted from deep in her chest and spilled from her lips to brush against his neck.
“You’ve a fresh mouth on you, sir,” she said, stepping back.
“I could say the same for you.” He knew he shouldn’t but he followed her retreat, step for step, until she was backed up against the wall and he was looming over her. He placed his hands on the wall on either side of her head and watched in fascination as she blinked up at him, her eyes widening as she saw his intent.
“Are you thinking to kiss me?” she asked breathlessly.
“Are you thinking to let me?” Nick mimicked her soft drawl, not quite Irish he realized. No, her accent was softer, slower, almost musical.
“Will I be singing your praises afterward?” she asked and he heard amusement in her words.
Nick bent his head and captured her mouth, captured the laugh that came tumbling across her lips, captured the quiet moan that followed. Her lips were soft and full and made for kissing. There was no hesitation in her response, no shy withholding, only acceptance and enthusiasm. He brushed his tongue across the seam of her lips and she opened to him, invited him in, met his tongue with her own and danced and parried.
He angled his head, pressed firmly, drove his tongue into her eager mouth again and again. Hunger thrummed through his veins, pooled in his loins until he was hard and heavy, his cock straining against his trousers. He couldn’t remember the last time a kiss had driven him so quickly to arousal.
Voices intruded into the fog that surrounded his brain, male voices growing nearer.
He broke the kiss, watched as her eyes opened, registered the dazed look in their emerald depths. A fragment of memory chased along the fringes of his mind before drifting away.
She blinked once, twice, gave him a bright smile, and scooted under his arm and away. She patted the black stallion on the rump as she walked around him.
“I haven’t time to rub you down and sing your praises,” she crooned as she left the stall, turning into the long aisle.
Nick chuckled, shook his head to clear the last remnants of desire from his brain, then exited the stables by the back door, careful not to be seen by the gentlemen who had entered. As he closed the stable door behind him, he heard the stable master’s daughter’s glad cry of, “Da!”
Chapter Seven
Emily launched herself into her father’s waiting arms and buried her flushed face against his massive chest.
“How’s my girl?” Charles Calvert asked as he clasped his daughter tight in his arms.
“Wonderful, Da,” she whispered, drawing back to meet his intent gaze. “Truly, Da, I am well.”
“Gentlemen, this beautiful lass is my daughter, Emily,” Charles said as he turned to the two men who accompanied him. He kept his arm firm around her waist as he introduced her
to Mr. Boone and Lord Carmichael.
Mr. Boone was an older man with a gleaming bald head and an outrageously extravagant white mustache. He was big and round, nearly as tall as her father, with cheerful blue eyes. Lord Carmichael was younger, perhaps thirty-five, tall and lean with wide shoulders. His hair was a deep auburn, a shade or two darker than her own. He looked down at her with warm brown eyes.
“We’ve come to check on Danny Boy,” Charles said as he motioned the two men to proceed down the aisle. “How’d he fare on the journey?”
“Just fine. He’s a grand boy, Da. Everything you said in your letter. He’ll make a wonderful addition to Emerald Isle’s stables,” Emily assured him as she looped her arm through his and followed Mr. Boone and Lord Carmichael into the horse’s stall, careful not to allow her eyes to wander toward the wall in the corner where Nicholas Avery had kissed her.
“Your father has been extolling your skill with a horse,” Lord Carmichael remarked as he eyed the restless stallion. “But surely you haven’t been riding him?”
“There’s not a horse alive my Em can’t ride,” Charles said proudly.
“That’s quite a get up you’ve got on there, Miss Calvert,” Mr. Boone remarked with a smile. “Took you for a stable boy when I first saw you.”
Emily looked down at her white linen shirt and brown breaches and shot a chagrined look at her father, but Charles only smiled fondly at her.
“She can’t rightly tend to the beasty here in skirts and petticoats,” he declared.
Emily laughed softly at the change in her father’s attitude toward her. Perhaps she should have gotten herself addicted to laudanum years ago. It would certainly have saved her a lot of frustration, heartache and humiliation. Not to mention a wasted journey across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a husband.
“Shall we go into the house?” Charles asked. “According to Lady Margaret there is a bevy of marriageable misses attending this little soirée. Are you of a mind to marry, Lord Carmichael?”
“The thought has crossed my mind,” Carmichael admitted. “If for no other reason than to halt the parade of debutants my mother flaunts before me every chance she gets.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” Charles barked. “Why, I’m tickled pink my girl will be returning to Maryland with me come spring. Foolish notion, bringing her over here to catch a husband. Don’t know why I let her talk me into it.”
Emily rolled her eyes. How typical of Da to rewrite history to fit his changing ideas.
“None of my fellow countrymen caught your eye, Miss Calvert?” Lord Carmichael asked as they made their way across the stable yard.
“I’m afraid I made a disastrous showing during my few ventures into London Society,” Emily replied. “Perhaps you read about The Sleeping Wraith in the gossip rags?”
“I don’t read the rags, and try very hard to ignore my sisters when they read them aloud at the breakfast table,” he answered.
“Damn gossip mongers!” Charles roared. “I’ve a mind to file suit against the lot of them.”
Lord Carmichael looked from father to daughter with a frown.
“Outright liars, that’s what they are,” her father continued. “Why, Emily’s suitors kept me too busy to get a lick of business done. Seems every day one young buck or another was banging down my door to ask for her hand. I remember one day when three of them came to the house at once—”
“Da, you’re exaggerating.” Emily interrupted her father’s rambling monologue.
“Never,” he argued.
“I’d best go in through the back door.” Emily waved a hand at her attire. “Aunt Margaret will have my head if any of her guests see me in breaches.”
“We’ll see you at dinner, then?” Lord Carmichael asked as he bowed over her hand.
“Until then, gentlemen,” Emily replied with a wide smile as she disappeared into the house.
She stole up the servant’s stairs, flung open the door to the upper hallway, and came face to face with Aunt Margaret.
“What were you thinking?” Margaret hissed as she grabbed her arm and hauled her into her bed chamber.
“What now?” Emily wrenched her arm from her aunt’s grasp and stood glaring at her.
“You were seen by my guests,” Margaret said.
“If you wanted me to go unseen you should have taken me up on my offer to hightail it to London until this ridiculous stud fair is over,” Emily replied.
“Stud fair,” Margaret whispered in shock. “Hightail? Good God, Emily Ann, you sound like a stable hand.”
“I am a stable hand.”
“You are no such thing.”
“As like as,” Emily countered. “And happy to remain so.”
“You cannot mean that.” Margaret paced across the room, her lavender dinner gown billowing around her tiny frame. “I know these last few months have been difficult for you, but there is no reason to give up hope.”
“It was never my hope to marry an Englishman and live the rest of my life on this blighted island.”
“Your father—” Margaret began as she spun to face her niece.
“Leave Da out of this, Maggie,” Emily cried, using the moniker she knew her aunt detested. “Da understands. Finally, we are of like mind, and I won’t have you ruining that for me.”
“He is not thinking clearly,” Margaret replied. “He is still too upset by what happened to you while you were in my care. But he will come to his senses and see that you need a husband.”
“I need no such thing,” Emily retorted with a flip of her hair. “A husband is the last thing I need. What did a husband ever do for you, Maggie?”
“Lord Morris gave me his name and financial security,” Margaret answered promptly, her hands on her hips, her chin thrust out defiantly.
“I have a name, and it’s revered up and down the Bay,” Emily replied as she plopped onto the bench at the foot of her bed. She tugged off one boot and sent it flying across the room. “And I have financial security, more than I would if I’d married your lover’s son and handed my fortune over to him.” The second boot landed beside the first.
“I know you want children, Emily,” Margaret murmured. And Emily did not have the heart to taunt her aunt with the obvious reply.
“Do you know, Maggie,” Emily said as she rose to stand before her aunt. “Illegitimate children are a rite of passage in Calvert County. Everyone who’s anyone has one. So, you see I don’t need a husband even for that.”
Margaret sucked in a shocked breath.
“I’ve a mind to make good use of this little house party you insisted I attend,” Emily continued. “Perhaps when I return home I’ll be bringing more than one addition to Emerald Isle.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“Why not? I’ve seen more than one handsome gentleman who would make a fine stud.”
Emily looked up from the shirt buttons she was wrestling to free to find her aunt staring at her with wide eyes.
“Oh give over,” she relented. “I’ve no intention of frolicking with any of your guests.”
“Why?” Margaret asked softly. “Why do you take such joy in aggravating me?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I suppose because you think you know what’s best for everyone. But you don’t. Leastwise you don’t know what’s best for me.”
“Perhaps not,” Margaret agreed. “You are not the girl I thought you were.”
“Well, I’m not the girl I thought I was either.” Emily whipped her shirt over her head to stand before her aunt in her shift and trousers. Margaret looked at the long puckered scar that ran from her niece’s right shoulder over the swell of her breast before disappearing under her cotton shift. They both knew it ended between her breasts in a jagged circle.
It was a constant reminder of her battle to free herself from the laudanum addiction that had nearly cost her life.
“Let it be, Aunt Margaret,” Emily pleaded. “I cannot be that girl. I won’t be that girl. I
will make my own future. And if that future includes a husband and children that will be fine. But if it doesn’t, that, too, will be fine.”
Margaret sank wearily into a chair before the window and looked up at her niece. “I’m sorry I did not see what was happening to you.”
“How could you know?” Emily asked.
“You are right when you say I think I know what’s best for everyone. I’ve a colossal ego. I should have realized you needed to be eased off the damn elixir. You never would have… That night would not have happened.”
Emily knelt before her aunt on the hard floor and took her shaking hands in her own. “I have never blamed you for that night, or for what led to it. My God, I have felt so terribly guilty for putting you through it all. The Sleeping Wraith nonsense, the broken Almost Betrothal, the humiliation of having to retire to the country and letting them all believe it was shame that drove you away.”
“Oh, Emily.” Margaret raised her hand and tucked a wayward red curl behind Emily’s ear. “I’d rather they think I was driven away in shame than to think you an opium addict.”
Emily started to rise but Margaret stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“You misunderstand me, child. I am not ashamed of you. But I would not want anyone to judge you by that one fact. You are so much more than that. You are so much more than I could have imagined. There is strength in you, Emily. And determination. I’ve never seen such fierce determination in a woman.”
“Thank you, Aunt,” Emily replied with a soft smile. “That means a lot coming from the most determined woman I know.”
“We’re sure to butt heads in the next two weeks,” Margaret said as she released Emily and watched her rise.
“We might even come to blows,” Emily agreed.
“I will cease trying to see you married off,” Margaret offered.
“In exchange for?” Emily asked.
“Your promise that you will try to behave as the proper lady I know you are under all your vulgar American ways.”
“Oh, Maggie, do I have to?” Emily replied and then dove out of the way of the pillow her aunt tossed at her.
