Chapter 5
… I know it pains you not to oversee the proceedings personally. But you needn’t fret. She’s stout of heart, our Lydia.
—from Lady Georgiana Cleeve to Selina Kent, Duchess of Stanhope, posted from Dunkeld
Oh God , Lydia thought, oh God and oh damn and I’m sorry and also please don’t let me kill Georgiana.
She had no idea if the horse had the bit in its teeth—she’d dropped the reins. But it certainly felt that way, because her horse was hurling itself forward, seeming not to notice the fact that every step brought them closer to the fast-approaching zebras. The post-chaise was still half off the road, which slowed their progress as the wheels dragged through the mud—but the weight of the carriage seemed only to further alarm the animal, which was breathing hard and dancing wildly as it tried to tow its terrified mate and the carriage as well.
“Slow down,” she said, her voice breathless and frantic, “oh please, we’re all going to die, please slow down!”
And then Strathrannoch, the great enormous idiot, was beside her.
“Turn back!” she shrieked at him, chancing a glance away from her horse’s churning front hooves.
“You have to cut yourself free!” he bellowed back.
“What?”
“Cut yourself free! I’ll stay with the other horse and the carriage. Cut the straps and then get out of the way!”
“With what ?”
Strathrannoch rode a little closer, his black horse eating up the ground with its long strides. “Take my dirk.”
She chanced another look at him. He had the reins in one hand and a small knife in his other, brandishing it hilt-first. The blade must have been wrapped in his palm.
“Oh God,” she said. “I can’t. I can’t do that.”
“For Christ’s sake, take the damn dirk or we’re all going to meet the wrong end of sixty-four hooves!”
She squelched a brief flare of astonished admiration for his ability to do arithmetic at such a moment.
She looked at the dirk. She looked at the stampeding zebras, looming larger as they approached. And then she squeezed her eyes closed and thrust out her hand in the general direction of the earl.
She felt the hilt land, warm and solid, in her palm. She pulled it into her chest, her other hand still wrapped in the horse’s mane, her boots sliding about in her stirrups.
“Now,” he said. “Do it now. Cut yourself free. There are two leathers behind you that you’ll need to cut. I’ll hold the reins, and then hand them back to you when you’re done.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. Her fingers flexed convulsively around the dirk’s hilt.
“I can’t do it for you, lass. I can’t reach that far.”
Terror squeezed at her lungs. The horse rocked beneath her, and her fingers were wrapped so tightly in its mane that she feared what would happen if she let go. She could fall. She could be trampled.
But Georgiana was in the carriage behind her. She could not simply sit atop this beast and wait for death. She had to do what Strathrannoch had said. She had to. Her fear meant nothing in the face of Georgiana’s endangerment.
She took one shaky inhale. Armed with the dirk, she turned, her thighs squeezing the horse’s sides for dear life. She had to bend to reach the leathers that attached the horse to the carriage. She leaned, the horse’s mane in one hand and the dirk in the other, extending her body, her chest clamped down tight with anxiety. The horse’s hindquarters were dark with sweat and mud, bunching as its legs churned up the ground.
She stretched out the dirk and sawed it along the leather strap.
“Good lass,” said Strathrannoch.
She did not spare a glance to determine if he meant her or the bloody horse.
The dirk was razor-sharp, and it was the work of a moment to slice through the first harness strap. Carefully, so that she did not cut the horse, she moved the blade to the second strap.
“Wait,” said Strathrannoch, and she froze. “When you cut the strap, the horse is going to break free. I’ll ride alongside you long enough for you to turn around and grab the reins, and then I’ll go back for your friend in the carriage. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she rasped.
“Hold on like hell,” he said. “Cut fast and don’t let go.”
“On three,” she said.
“Aye.”
She waited. The horses thundered on. No one spoke. Finally she realized—
“I meant for you to count!”
“For Christ’s sake, woman! One—two—thr—”
Lydia cut the strap.
As Strathrannoch had predicted, her horse shot forward, outstripping the earl and his mount. Her fingers ached from clutching the horse’s mane, and her throat burned from—
Oh. She was screaming.
She made herself stop. She wrenched herself forward and dropped the dirk, trying not to fall, trying to get herself turned back around and able to ride. Georgiana was safe. She would be fine. She just needed to grab the bloody reins and—
She had them—she almost had them. She was half turned, the stirrups slapping against her feet and her hair whipping around her eyes, when the horse realized it was free and plunged sideways, toward the center of the road.
She felt herself slip to one side. Her hand scrabbled for the saddle, the reins, anything —
And then Strathrannoch was there at her side, heedless of her horse’s erratic flight. He was well above her on his enormous black, and he reached down toward her and wrapped one powerful arm about her waist.
“Are you caught in the stirrups?” he shouted.
“I—no—”
Before the word was fully out of her mouth, Strathrannoch flexed his arm at the elbow and dragged her up and into his chest.
Her face smashed against thin linen and, beneath it, a rock-solid pectoral muscle. She felt his arms rippling as he clutched her close and sawed at the reins with his other hand, urging his horse to slow, pulling them off the road and into the trees that flanked it.
“For God’s sake, woman!” Strathrannoch bellowed in her ear. “I have you! Stop screaming!”
Oh. She hadn’t realized she’d started again.
She forced the screams back down and turned her head just in time to see the zebras blow past them in a blur of black and white. She smelled the mud from the road and animal sweat, and also the scent of the man who held her: smoke and earth and burnt honey.
“Georgiana,” she mumbled into his shirt. “The carriage.”
“Aye, aye, dinna fash—”
Dinna fash? Had the man not realized she was composed primarily of worry? She clutched his shirt in one hand and dragged herself up to look over his shoulder as his mount finally came to a halt beneath the canopy of oaks.
Good heavens, her horse had covered a lot of ground. Georgiana was yards back, the carriage halted just off the road and well out of range of the passing zebras. She was, as far as Lydia could tell, already on her feet and busily attempting to detach the remaining horse from its harness. Bacon was on the ground, charging alternately at the zebras and a tall stalk of grass.
Lydia’s horse, meanwhile, had spun about and was making its way back toward Strathrannoch Castle. Rather than running from the oncoming zebras, it appeared to have joined them.
“Traitor,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said, and then she looked up into Strathrannoch’s face.
He was looking down at her. His face was set in a scowl, and though the goldish stubble might have disguised it when she was on the ground and he was looming a full head above her, she could see now that the line of his jaw was hard and sharp and precise.
Nothing about his face was soft. Even his eyes—gold around the pupil, surrounded by blue and green—were hard as they bore down upon her.
Her lips parted. His gaze dropped to her mouth.
And Lydia became suddenly aware of a number of physical sensations.
She was pulled across his lap, her chest crushed against his, one of her knees tangled in her skirts and pressed into his hip. Her other leg was stretched across his opposite thigh. Her hand was wrapped in his shirt, holding their bodies pressed together. His arm encircled her waist.
They were as closely entwined as two people could be. She could feel his heat straight through the layers of their clothes. He was hot as a forge and hard as iron, and the burnt-honey smell of him went straight to her belly and then lower.
She felt a sudden, dizzy unfurling in her body as she looked at him looking at her mouth.
She licked her lips. His arm flexed, as if involuntarily, but she could not come closer to him. She was already pressed as tightly as she could be, her curves molded to the contours of his chest.
He made a quick, rasping sound in the back of his throat, and she—
She liked that sound. She liked it quite a lot. Her indrawn breath was almost a gasp.
His eyes flew back up to hers.
“I beg your pardon,” he said hoarsely. “You’re—are you—can you get down?”
“Oh,” she said.
“The crisis has passed—’tis perfectly natural to—that is, I—”
She had no idea what he was talking about. “I’m not entirely certain I can, er, use my legs.”
“Bloody hell.” He dropped the reins and shifted his grip on her, scooping her legs up with one arm.
The musculature on the man’s limbs was absurd, really. She was not a tall woman, but certainly no one would describe her as petite. She had plump thighs and generous hips and breasts that regularly threatened the wide, low necklines currently à la mode. But the man lifted her up against him as though she were a delicate little waif.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have liked it quite so much. But as he flung his leg over the horse’s side and brought them both to the ground, she was forced to admit to herself that she found all that leashed physical power rather alarmingly appealing.
“I’m going to set you down,” he informed her once he had his feet. “Can you stand on your own?”
“We’ll find out.”
He muttered something under his breath and then let her slide down his body until her feet touched the ground.
Lydia felt every slow, hot inch of that slide. Her riding habit was made of sensible cotton twill, but it might as well have been made of gossamer for all it seemed to separate her body from his. She felt the press of his chest, and the buttons of his falls. She felt the cool brush of air on the backs of her calves as her feet met the ground.
And when he released her, she promptly crumpled back into him.
“Good Christ,” he muttered, and wrapped his arms around her again. “Take a moment to get your legs under you. I have you.”
He continued to mumble under his breath, something about devil and lunatic , and she decided it was best for her dignity if she did not try to discern any further words.
When she could finally stand on her own, she tugged herself out of Strathrannoch’s grip, and he dropped his arms so fast that a flare of embarrassment lit inside her.
He had rescued her, yes. But surely he had not anticipated that such a rescue would end with an extended embrace. Perhaps she had imagined that heated glance at her mouth.
“We ought to go back to Georgiana,” she said. “Make certain she’s all right.”
“Aye,” he said.
“Can we, er”—she shot a glance at his horse—“walk? I am not entirely confident I can get back up on a horse. Ever.”
He gave a raspy laugh. “Aye, lass. We can walk. Had you ever ridden astride like that before?”
They made for the road, and Lydia glanced up. Strathrannoch’s fancifully colored eyes were fixed on his horse, lipping at grasses near the road’s edge.
“Of course,” she said primly. “At least… four or five times.”
“Christ.” He ran his fingers through his curls, which were a little sweaty and standing out in all directions. “That was good work. Brave and deft.”
Her face warmed at the praise. “I screamed the whole time.”
“Aye. I might be deaf in my left ear now.”
She lifted her gaze to his face. He was not smiling, but she thought there might be a hint of amusement at the corner of his mouth.
“But that doesn’t make it any less brave,” he said. “More, I think. Not less.”
She looked down at her slippers and did not respond.
She’d experienced a pure animal terror on the horse’s back, with Strathrannoch’s dirk clutched in her fist. But fear was not a new emotion for her. She felt it when she had to enter a ballroom and a hundred pairs of eyes fixed upon her as she was announced.
She’d felt it—cold and paralyzing—the first time she’d delivered a manuscript to Selina at Belvoir’s. She’d passed the argument for universal suffrage across Selina’s desk and looked down at her own neat handwriting, the product of eleven painstaking drafts.
Selina’s wide mouth had been tilted crookedly up, half a familiar smile. “Are you certain?”
Lydia’s hands had trembled, and so she’d locked them behind her back.
What hope could there be for change without universal suffrage? Why would anything ever improve in the British Empire if a handful of terrible men controlled its fate and answered to no one?
How could she expect to make a difference if she let herself be ruled by her fears?
“I’m certain,” she’d said. “Print it.”
With every manuscript she’d delivered to Belvoir’s—her arguments for divorce reform, the anti-royalist tracts that could very well land her in prison—she’d known that same throat-tightening terror. But she went on anyway, just as she had cut the leathers and saved Georgiana and the carriage from disaster.
Because some things were worth the panic and the potential for humiliation. Some things mattered more than her own personal dread.
They were almost back to the post-chaise. She licked her dusty, salt-grimed lips and thought about Strathrannoch and the invention his brother had stolen. She thought about the farmers dragged from their homes in the Clearances and the aristocrats who believed the land they lived upon was owed to them by right of nothing more than being born.
She thought about her fears and her humiliations, and then she put them aside.
“I will do it,” she told him.
He looked down. His shirt was wrinkled, and she could see the golden column of his throat. “Do what?”
“I will write to Belvoir’s and stay here until they reply. We can examine the letters together. I should not have tried to flee.”
His eyes flickered over her face, but he did not say anything. He nodded once, a quick and stark acceptance.
“By the by,” she said, “why do you possess a herd of wild zebras?”