The Trouble with Anna

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

J ULIAN VAULTED NEATLY OVER THE fence. “Give me your horse.”

Lady Anna wheeled the chestnut. “Find the stablemaster. Tell him to come after me!”

“Damn it, Lady Anna, I said give me the horse!” He lunged for her reins, but too late. In three strides, she’d reached the rails and arced over them, racing for the burst of red and orange leaves that marked the low woods across the meadow.

Julian charged for the yard.

“I need a horse!” he yelled to a groom currying a tall gray. The groom gawped at him, so Julian grabbed the lead rope and swung up onto the gray’s bare back. “There’s a child in the well. Fetch me a rope, the longest one you have. Quickly, man!”

The groom sprinted for the tack room and returned with a long coil.

“Good. Now find the stablemaster. Tell him we need more rope, blankets, and men. Hurry!”

Julian didn’t wait for an answer. He looped the lead rope through the halter and kicked the gray into a flat run. Without a bridle or saddle and on an unfamiliar horse, he couldn’t jump the fence, and by the time he’d skirted it, Lady Anna was almost across the meadow, riding fast, too bloody fast. She reached the tree line and the forest swallowed her up.

“Lady Anna!” he bellowed, but she was too far away to hear—or too stubborn to listen.

Julian’s heart galloped as he pressed the gray harder, cursing his lack of a saddle. It seemed an age before he reached the woods, and his chest lurched with relief at the trail of deep half-moon prints Lady Anna’s horse had left behind. At least he could follow her.

Branches whipped by at an alarming rate. An elm reached out and swiped him, but Julian ducked hard to the right, his weight shifting badly. He gripped with his thighs and held on as the path opened up into a clearing with a low wooden shack.

There was the chestnut. Riderless.

“Lady Anna!” Julian spun the gray in a tight circle.

A terrible silence answered him.

“Lady Anna!” he bellowed.

A faint, hollow cry echoed from behind the shack, and his chest seized.

Christ! She’s in the well, the little idiot.

Julian rounded the building and spotted the low stone well, its wooden cap splintered. A bridle was tied around an old iron crank, and the reins descended into gloom.

Julian leapt off the gray and ran over, dreading what he might find.

Two small faces, pale as moons, stared up at him from the darkness.

“Are you all right?” he shouted down.

“We’re g-grand!” Lady Anna called up with a determined cheer that made his chest seize. “Only Henry’s b-banged his arm, and it’s a bit slippy to climb up.”

Julian threw off his greatcoat, braced his arms, and leaned over for a better look. A frigid funnel of air spiraled up to him, like the breath of a ghost.

“I’m throwing down a rope. Tie yourself in and then tie the reins around the boy. Good stout knots!”

“I t-tied Henry in before you got h-here!”

He grinned. “Of course you did, my general. Hurry and tie yourself in, then.”

He could hear faint splashing from the water below. “Done!”

Calculations flashed through his mind. Lady Anna was stuttering from the cold, but the boy had been in longer. “The child comes up first.”

“N-naturally!” snapped Lady Anna, and Julian’s grin grew wider.

“Hold tight, Henry.” Julian looped the reins around the crank and began to pull, hand over hand, until a small, sodden head rose from the gloom. Julian caught the boy under an arm and hauled him onto solid ground.

Off came Julian’s jacket, which he thrust at the boy. “Get out of your wet clothes and put this on. Quickly!”

Henry only looked at him, shivering and white with shock.

“Quickly now, there’s a soldier! We can’t leave Lady Anna down there alone.”

That roused the child. He scrambled for the jacket and Julian turned back to the well.

“Ready, Lady Anna?”

“R-ready!”

Julian heaved on the rope. It went taut, but didn’t rise. Lady Anna might look like a little thing, but she weighed as much as a boulder.

“It’s my skirts—they’re w-wet, too h-heavy!” With Henry up, she wasn’t quite able to disguise the slice of fear in her voice. “I’ll have to w-wait for the men!”

“Like hell you will!”

Julian wrapped the rope twice around his hand and gripped hard, bracing his feet against the wall of the well. He pulled slowly but with brutal force, until his neck corded and the great muscles of his back threatened to tear. But it wasn’t enough, not nearly.

Julian paused and grimaced, knowing she would hate what he said next. “Lady Anna, take off your skirt!”

A loud squeak ricocheted up the walls of the well, followed by complete silence.

“Lady Anna, I know you heard me.” He lowered his voice to its most lordly and commanding. “Take off your skirt!”

More silence.

“Damn it, I refuse to let you die of stubbornness. Either you remove your skirt, or I climb down there and remove it for you.”

“Oh, all r-right!” There was a bit of bad-natured splashing, and then a tug on the rope. “I’m ready!”

Julian braced his legs again and pulled and the rope began to move, rasping up over the stone inch by inch and taking strips of his palm with it. When the rope went cold, soaked through with dank water, Julian knew she was close. A slim hand, blue and trembling, groped its way over the lip of the well. Lady Anna found a hold and her dark head scraped up, followed by a shoulder. “Stop!” she called, and plastered herself to the lip of the well, clinging like a monkey. “I’ll wait here until—”

“No, you bloody well won’t!” Julian gave one last mighty heave and Lady Anna tumbled over the wall in a wet explosion of legs.

Wet, naked legs.

Julian skidded down to her in the dirt and wrapped his greatcoat around her, careful to keep his eyes up and his hands off, though it was impossible not to notice how shockingly smooth and lush her bare skin looked. It was as if her legs had been dipped in cream. Little water drops beaded on them, glistening across the long expanse of—

He jerked his eyes to her face. “Lady Anna, are you injured?”

She looked up, hair plastered to her head and a livid streak down the side of her face. “I’m c-c-cold. So c-cold.”

Julian reached into the greatcoat for the buttons of her riding jacket.

“My l-lord!” she said, and blushed fiery red, trying to fumble him away.

“Don’t be stupid.” His strong hands were implacable as he peeled off the soaked wool of her jacket, ignoring the peekaboo glimpses that her wet shirt afforded him. He tucked her more deeply into his coat and snapped the fabric closed beneath her chin, hauling her and the boy both hard against the warmth of his broad chest. “Hold on, my adventurers. Help is coming.”

The child burrowed into his side, but Lady Anna, with an odd little yelp, tried to scramble away, one of those creamy legs punching through the folds of the greatcoat before she yelped again and jerked it back in.

Christ. How did such a little thing have legs that long?

Julian clenched his teeth, clamped her to him, and rubbed the length of her back up and down, hard, willing his warmth into her. She was cold as an icicle and he was hot. Much too damn hot for his own ward.

“Where the devil are your men?”

It wasn’t long before a pack of grooms galloped around the corner. They wrapped the boy in blankets, but Julian held Lady Anna firmly against his side when she tried to scuttle away. “Of all the freakish starts! What the hell were you thinking when you climbed down into that well?”

Her head whipped up. “Henry was s-scared! I doubt he can swim! Should I have stood by and wr-wrung my h-hands?”

“You should have waited for me!”

“There was no time to w-wait!”

“Damn it, Lady Anna, I am meant to do the rescuing!” Julian yelled, then froze.

Surely it was the stupidest thing he’d ever said in his life?

Lady Anna lifted her chin like a weapon, even as a drop of water gathered on the tip of her nose. Her lips were purple, she smelled strongly of rotten weeds, and she was dangerously cold, yet Julian was hit by the sudden, overwhelming need either to burst out laughing, or to wrap his arms around her tight.

He released her shoulders abruptly and stepped away.

“Forgive me, Lady Anna. You were magnificent and we both know it. I’m only shouting from the shock of it. Shall we start over?”

She curled her chin down and retreated into her layers of wool, presenting him with the top of her head.

Ah. A strange note echoed in Julian’s chest, fighting with the heat already there that was part anger and part something else entirely. The wet and bedraggled scrap standing before him knew how to fight, but clearly she was a stranger to kindness.

“Let’s get you home and warm, and I’ll come again tomorrow,” he offered gently. “We’ll get everything sorted, you have my word.”

Julian only meant to be reassuring, but he should have known it wouldn’t be so easy. Not with her.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I don’t need your help! The only thing I need from you is to leave me alone !” Lady Anna gathered the greatcoat around her, and in a flash of boots and bare thighs, she leapt neatly up onto the nearest horse and was gone.

“Christ,” Julian swore as he stared after his ward, who was half-naked, dripping, and running away, all because of him.

He’d bungled it.

Again.