But she wasn’t about to open her eyes, either. If she saw how high up from the ground she was, she would most certainly faint. And then she would split her brains open upon the cobbles of the yard and that would be the end of Lydia Dean.
“Miss Dean, you have my word, nothing is going to happen to you. Tilly is utterly dependable.”
“As she was yesterday?”
Mr. Fawkes paused and then spoke again in a slightly pained voice. “That was my fault. I should have taken more care. I was day-dreaming.”
“I was day-dreaming too,” Lydia confessed. She pictured him in her mind, the sun lighting his nut-brown hair with a halo of gold, his hazel eyes tender upon her, his smooth brow crossed with worry as he sought to make certain she was not hurt. She loved lying in his arms, although it seemed the only way she ever found herself there was after a mishap with a horse. The sudden line of thinking caused her to open her eyes very suddenly. Not that she wanted to fall off, certainly, but perhaps a slow, well-constructed swoon directly into his arms would not be the worst thing in the world…
She gasped. The ground really was very far away from her, blocked only by the arching neck and tilting head of a bored, restless mare, who was chewing at her bit and leaning her head against the smiling Mr. Fawkes. She noticed he had a very tight hold on the reins and nodded grimly. “You are taking care today,” she observed, gripping the saddle’s pommel with white knuckles.
“I made a silly mistake,” he said wheedlingly, giving her that enchanting smile. She thought it lit up his entire face. She thought it lit up the entire world. She thought she was looking at him like a simpering maiden and resolved to cut it out at once. “Won’t you let me take you for a little walk around the yard? You should get used to how she feels beneath you.”
Lydia considered it. She was already up here, wasn’t she? And it was just a walk — no faster than Mr. Fawkes would go. And he would admire her for it. And she longed and longed for his admiration. Let him think she was brave — he need never know the worst about her! “What must I do?” she asked, managing to keep a quaver of fear out of her voice.
“You must relax and let her movement roll right through you. She will sway a little from side to side — if you are tense it will be jarring, but if you are relaxed you will sway with her.”
“I don’t understand a word you just said.”
“Have you ever been on a boat? A very small boat, which rolls a great deal on the swells.”
“I have.” She had not particularly enjoyed it. Did she enjoy anything outdoors? Lydia suddenly thought herself very boring.
“It is like the boat. If you sit straight and tall while a boat is rolling, it will knock you around. If you let your back sway, you will be moving with the boat.”
Lydia considered this. It made a modicum of sense, she decided. “So I should pretend Tilly is a boat.”
“That, exactly.”
“Very well.” She gripped the pommel again. “Let us sail away.”
“Not quite. Take your hands off the saddle.”
“What!” She shook her head so vehemently her bonnet slipped and the chic little feather fell right in front of her eyes.
“Ah, now you have to,” Mr. Fawkes chuckled, and she scowled at him. “Now, now, you can hold her mane! But when you hold the saddle it makes you slouch, and when you slouch you brace against her motion, and then you cannot feel comfortable.”
Ridiculousness, Lydia thought crossly, and she let go, very slowly, so that she could fix her bonnet. And then, following his stern look, she wrapped her fingers in the mare’s luxurious dark mane, twisting the coarse strands of hair against her kid gloves.
“Ready now?”
“Bon voyage,” Lydia told Mary, who was sitting on an upturned bucket, watching the affair with reluctant interest.
“Eyes straight ahead!” Mr. Fawkes instructed, and then he gave Tilly’s reins a little tug and started walking.
Lydia was in no way prepared for the great swing of motion which heralded the mare’s first step. It was an extraordinary feeling, as if she had been sitting on a couch that had suddenly come alive and started moving in a hundred different directions. The mare was traveling forward, to be sure, but there was the side-to-side motion that Mr. Fawkes had predicted, and that was what felt strangest of all, as if she was being lifted forwards and sideways at one time, and then again in the other direction, and she could not think what was causing it.
But she did not have too much energy to spend on thinking about what was creating the motion, she was too busy trying to stay with it. She could feel herself slowly listing to the left, although both of her legs were on the right side of the sidesaddle, as if the saddle itself were tilting over, and when she shifted herself to try and keep her balance in the middle of the horse, she felt herself slipping to the right, and her ankles were crying out from the weight they had to bear as she tried to hold herself up. After just half a turn of the yard, she really felt like she was in danger of falling off. “Do stop, Mr. Fawkes,” she breathed, clutching the mane tightly. “I am afraid I am all out of balance.”
He stopped at once, and Lydia struggled to shift herself back to the middle of the horse, though it was no easy task. Tilly shook her head, ears pinned with irritation. “I’m sorry, Tilly,” she muttered, wriggling in the saddle and tugging at recalcitrant skirts which had gotten pinned beneath her legs and would not let her move. “I’m so very sorry.”
“Do you want help?” Mr. Fawkes asked, a trifle hesitantly. She looked at him for a moment. Had he decided now to feel nervous about touching her inappropriately? What a puzzle men were! Now that she was halfway off a horse, suddenly it was against the rules to touch her?
“I think I have it, thank you,” she replied crisply, and she did — she was right in the middle again. She would never feel completely secure — sidesaddles were not made to make a lady feel secure, they were really for the opposite, to keep a lady ladylike and therefore completely dependent upon a gentleman, and so there was no help for that. But, all in all, it had not really been so terrible, and if she could just learn to keep herself balanced, she would be able to manage walking.
Just walking, though. She was fairly certain trotting and cantering were completely out of the picture at this point. Or ever.
“Ready to go on?” he asked, and she nodded.
They walked around the yard two full circuits this time, and nothing untoward happened — a little slip here, a little wriggle there, but all in all Lydia began to feel that she was quite capable of sitting upon a quiet horse while it walked in circles. The operation was starting to feel like a success. Maybe she wasn’t going to fascinate any gentlemen by being first to the kill, but that really wasn’t her intent, after all. Leave the tomboyish escapades to Grainne and her like. Walking around the yard was quite good enough for Lydia Dean!
But then… she began to glance out of the yard and onto the park drive with a little longing. Wouldn’t it be fun to see what the park looked like from up on horseback? The yard certainly looked different from up here, but there wasn’t much to see — the dung in the stalls, the moss on the roof tiles — it wasn’t precisely a stroll through the forest.
Mr. Fawkes had turned to check on her and caught her glancing out over the wall. “Care to take this out into the park?” he asked.
“Dare we? I mean — yesterday, she was a little…” Lydia faltered, not wanting Mr. Fawkes to continue to blame himself their mishap on the drive the day before.
But he seemed quite confident. “You are perfectly safe in my hands, Miss Dean,” he said warmly, and the depth of feeling in his voice caused her to blush. She turned around, scarcely realizing what a feat of balance this was on a moving horse, and called out to Mary that she should stay where she was; they would be back in a moment.
Mary looked startled, and for a moment Lydia thought she would argue, but then the maid settled back on her bucket with a murmured “Yes miss.” She should have argued, of course, because Lydia had n
o business setting off unchaperoned into the park with Mr. Fawkes, but somehow, Lydia just didn’t care. She smiled down at Mr. Fawkes, and he smiled back at her, before he turned and pushed open the iron gates.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Once out, though, it seemed as though nothing too exciting or untoward was going to happen. The little trio walked along in silence for a little while, while the birdsong echoed from the trees all around. They passed the menage, a walled arena with a footing of wood-chips blended with soil, and Mr. Fawkes pointed it out.
“That’s where you will learn to trot and canter,” he said, and Lydia murmured an agreement, making no move to dissuade him from his illusions about her riding career. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were alone together for a little while. She could watch him walk beside the horse, and the patterns the sun made as it shone down on them through the leaves above, and when he turned to smile up at her every now and then, she could smile back.
It was the closest thing to lovemaking she would have from him, she supposed, and she would savor every bit of it.
And then as time went by, he began to talk. About horses, at first, and how he had always loved them, and how he had snuck out of his room at his cousins’ house when he was a child so that he could steal rides on their ponies, teaching himself to ride by galloping bareback around and around their paddocks. “I used to apologize to the ponies, for waking them up and disturbing their sleep,” he remembered. “But then I went to visit the stables in the middle of the day, and saw them all stretched out sleeping in their straw, so I didn’t feel so bad after that. They slept all day long, the blighters!” He shook his head, chuckling. “I learned so much from those ponies. They were too good for my cousins.”
“What was wrong with your cousins, sir?” Lydia asked curiously. She realized she knew nothing of his family or upbringing: she knew only that he had no money and no title, and that was where his story began and ended for the ton.
“Oh, they were spoilt,” he sighed. “Like so many young masters of Quality are, I suppose. They teased me for being the poor relation. Jeremy in particular… he had a talent for making me feel very small, let’s leave it at that. At any rate, I was younger than they were and when they went away to Eton — the eldest son when I was seven, the twins when I was eight — it wasn’t the worst at Eddington. My aunt wasn’t too dreadful. She let me keep the oldest pony, because he was too old to sell, I think. I had him until I went to Eton myself — he died soon after I left. And then so did she.”
“How awful!” Lydia smoothed Tilly’s mane. She was already feeling rather fond of the mare; she couldn’t imagine how a young Mr. Fawkes would have felt upon learning his beloved pony had died. To say nothing of an aunt who… well, who wasn’t too dreadful. “I am sorry you lost your pony.”
“He was very old, past thirty. He couldn’t even chew oats any more; the grooms made him a gruel to eat at every feeding. But it was rather… it was sad. I loved him. Dear Hen.”
“His name was Hen?”
“Yes — he was by the Hendrick’s nice Welsh mountain stallion, so they called him Hen. He was out of a very nice mare named Sunshine, and all the barons of Pembroke had grown up with ponies from Sunshine. Simply superb bloodline.”
Lydia, fearing another discussion of equine bloodlines like the ones she often endured at the supper table, hastened to change the subject. “The Baron of Pembroke, Mr. Fawkes? Are you related?”
“He’s my cousin,” Mr. Fawkes said carelessly. “Jeremy. Look over there, a hawk!”
She looked obediently — a large, vicious-looking bird was huddling over something bloody on a nearby tree branch. Ugh. “Your cousin, you say?” she went on after recovering from the gruesome sight. She was thinking rapidly, ticking through the bloodlines of the ton in much the same way Mr. Fawkes loved to do with horses. The Baron of Pembroke, why, that was Jeremy Harding, a cad in every sense of the word, but one of the wealthiest men in London. What a pity, she thought, what an out-and-out pity that Mr. Fawkes could not have been more friendly with his cousin.
And that there were twins in the way after him. Lord Harding was unmarried and in no apparent rush to rectify the manner, even though, despite his reputation as a rude, unpleasant blackguard, his wealth and estate attracted no shortage of young ladies. Even Miss Victoria Stewart, who was at least twenty-six if she was a day, had made a rather obvious pass at him last Season, and been so humiliated by the entire event (the words he had used to decline her startling invitation to dance a waltz with her included decrepit debutante in decline, and he did not have a low-pitched voice) that she had gone straight back to Scotland and took up residence with her sister, who was steadily having children at a rather alarming rate and needed the help anyway.
But who were the twins? Lydia couldn’t think of any twins on the scene in London. They would have been very noticeable, she would think.
“Yes, Jeremy Harding is my cousin,” Mr. Fawkes was saying, his fingers kneading the leather reins in his hands. “He has not changed very much since we were children, I’m afraid. I suppose you can see why I’d rather live here at Tivington than with him.”
If he’d even have you, Lydia thought. She didn’t think Jeremy Harding would bow too much to familial duty. “But what of your other cousins? The twins? Surely they have estates of their own. The Pembroke estate alone has more than six holdings.”
Mr. Fawkes laughed. “Been reading your peerage, debutante? You’re right, they would have estates of their own, but one is dead and the other is somewhere in Spain, marching in circles after Napoleon.”
Lydia swallowed hard and thought about that. Was Mr. Fawkes really one relative removed from one of the great fortunes of England? It couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t. She wouldn’t think about it anymore. “I will pray for their safe return,” she said instead, although she wouldn’t really. If they were half as bad as their older brother, they weren’t worth her notice.
“Will you really, Miss Dean?” He stopped suddenly, pulling up Tilly, who immediately snatched at the reins, trying to reach the grass sprouting along the drive’s edge. He ignored the mare’s antics and stepped closer to Lydia, a hand on the horse’s neck. Lydia felt herself leaning towards him, though he was on her left and most of her body was hanging from the right side of the horse. She longed to be closer to him, though, even if it meant giving up her hard-won stability on Tilly’s back. “I myself have thought a few dishonorable thoughts about them of late,” Mr. Fawkes confessed, his voice low, as if he feared spies in the trees around them. “It has seemed all too hard lately that they live so comfortably, and I have to struggle and live on the charity of friends.”
“Why, Mr. Fawkes — ” Lydia tried to play off his earnest words but no coy phrases came to mind. Where had all her ballroom tricks gone? She had nothing left but candor. She only hoped it was enough. “Mr. Fawkes, I wish you did not feel your struggle so harshly. I must admit, sir — I feel it too.”
He was looking at her now with his heart showing upon his face, and she felt she could hardly catch her breath as she waited for his words. “Miss Dean,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, his eyes tortured, “Lydia, forgive me when I ask so bluntly, but — is there any hope at all?”
Lydia closed her eyes, stricken to the core. She did not know what she had expected — an invitation to run away together, perhaps, or simply a courtly tribute to her lips and eyes and brow — but this, this stark and brutal honesty, an acknowledgement of their feelings for one another, though they’d never been spoken in so many words — it made everything so much worse. If he knew that she loved him, and if he knew that he loved her, though they had shared few words that were not suitable for discourse in a public street, well then wasn’t that a sure sign of how pure and true their feelings really were? And didn’t that make abandoning them so much worse, a crime against her own heart and soul, to say nothing of his?
She felt the horse shifting beneath her as Mr. Fawkes allow
ed the reins to loosen in his hands and she moved towards the grass on the verge, she felt her head swimming as she tried to think of what words to say next, what course of action to suggest, because to run away and be married was not an option and to walk away and marry another was just as unthinkable.
And that is how it happened, that as he grew closer to her, forgetting to hold onto the reins, and he placed his hand upon hers, and as her eyes fluttered open to meet his, great blue eyes full of love and hurt and loss, Mr. Fawkes understood and only said “Ah!” sharply, his hands tightening upon hers.
And thank goodness his hand was so tight, they would think later, that he was able to snatch her from the saddle as Tilly exploded forward, her head high in terror, the second spook in two days from a reliable old warhorse. Skirts over her head, shrieking with terror, Lydia felt herself pulled from the saddle and scraped across the high pommel, her boots slipping clear of the stirrups by some miracle, and then she was being cradled close in Mr. Fawkes’ arms.
Not again, she thought, and he was yanking down at her skirts, straightening her dress, and his face emerged in front of hers, frightened and pale and desperate, and she closed her eyes just as his lips touched hers with a fierceness and ferocity that completely drove any maidenly notions she might have once cherished about kissing from her mind forever.
She tilted back beneath his kiss, opening her mouth without thinking to his bruising lips, feeling the heat of his breath upon her and the grip of his hands burning her arms. Lydia could only surrender to this kiss, and she did so willingly, letting the shock of it roll away and giving into the pleasure. He was hers, all hers, but more than that, this kiss said, she was his, he was taking possession of her, and she gave way to him gladly, pressing her body against his, feeling heat-to-heat, that spot between their waists that seemed to pull at one another with fierce need.
So intoxicating a kiss! She reached her hands up to his head, wishing her kid gloves gone so that she could feel his hair in her fingers, pulling him still tighter against her, and he moaned against her lips a great sigh that she seemed to feel through her entire body. They were wrapped up in each other so tightly that she thought their bodies were one, and then, passion seizing her, she thought nothing at all.
The Honorable Nobody (Heroines on Horseback Book 2) Page 17
