Chapter 1 #3
She’d wrapped her books in her plaid scarf, but the thin fabric would not protect the leather-bound tomes from rain.
She was relieved when they’d finally crossed the open space and entered the woods surrounding the abbey, until the first crack of lightning sounded.
A moment later Jack hopped out of the cart.
As was their routine, she would take the horse to the stable while Jack slipped through a narrow opening in the stone wall and unlocked the garden gate.
The stable looming ahead of her, she leaped out of the cart and led the pony into the interior out of the storm.
The heavy stone walls and thatched roof muffled the thunder, and she was at once met with the pungent smell of straw and aged leather.
Her eyes shifted to the stall where Friar Tucker kept the Abbey’s prize horse, an aged bay mare.
The stall was empty. She still couldn’t believe he would be away until the end of the month.
He’d said not to worry, but that was like telling the sky not to rain.
He rarely left the abbey for more than a few days at a time. Now he would be gone three weeks.
After she unhooked the lead and chains, she housed the pony in the stall beside the plow horse, then scooped grain from the bin and fed both horses.
Only after she returned to the cart and removed her books did she realize both oil lanthorns hanging from posts at each end of the stable had been lit.
For some reason she had failed to notice this detail when she first entered.
Alarmed, Rose tightened her arms on the books and straightened. She peered up and down the narrow aisle, listening, but heard no one present. It was then she saw another horse, housed in the far stall. Not just any horse either.
The magnificent Irish hunter was a beauty, at least seventeen hands tall, with long legs and a full chest. Though its coat was dusty, she imagined it would shine a glossy red when brushed.
Suddenly she had a vague recollection that this stallion looked familiar.
Heart pounding, she stepped back and bumped a wooden trestle.
A leather bridle and saddle draped the rack. She traced her finger along the etching of a dragon. A chill coursed down her spine.
Impossible!
Jack had seen Roxburghe and his men cross the bridge.
Rose spun on her heel, swirling straw with her movement, and slammed headlong into a wall.
Or what could have been a wall. Her head smashed against a man’s jaw with a blinding thunk. Her books flew from her hands, barely missing the water barrel, the impact propelling her backward. She would have fallen had two large hands not grabbed her arms and steadied her.
Her lashes snapped upward as her chin tilted and she stared into a pair of eyes, not quite black but indigo. Sensation bolted down her spine. Then just that fast, as if he felt it too, the expression of annoyance on his face vanished and her own alarm melded with something more pliable than fear.
Shock perhaps, for she would admit to nothing else.
Close up, Lord Roxburghe was even taller and more solidly built than she’d thought when she saw him atop his horse in the village. But his strength did not come from his appearance as much as it did from some unseen force inside him.
One glance into his unshaven face told her why people called him the Black Dragon. Though it had been the name of his frigate, he wore the mark like a mantle of armor. Heat burned where his hands held her.
“Loose me,” she whispered on a caught breath, cleared her throat and said the words again with more authority. “Now, if you will.”
His grip loosened. She stepped backward but not so quickly her actions signaled fear or retreat. Her foot bumped one of her precious books that lay scattered in the straw.
“Allow me,” he offered and stooped to gather up the books.
She started to protest but he had already knelt at her feet.
Instead she let her gaze trace the width of his shoulders beneath his jacket.
His hair was nearly black in the shadows that seemed to steal the setting sun’s light from the surrounding sky and clubbed back from his face with a leather thong.
A small silver hoop pierced his left earlobe and gave him an irrepressibly wicked look.
She stole another glance at his face as he rose and had to suppress the urge to step back.
She had never met a man taller than she was.
Being this close to such a rarity stole her breath.
“You read,” he said, turning each leather-bound tome over in his gloved hands. Amusement laced his expression. “Arthurian Legends? The Myth of Merlin? Metallurgy and Electricity?”
She removed each book from his hands and held them protectively to her chest, not about to trust this stranger with her secrets.
She was conscious of a prickling warmth that spread where his fingers had brushed hers as if the books had become electricity themselves.
“Is it so strange that a woman should read? Or that I should be interested in science?”
His eyes filled with growing amusement brushed down her, taking in her simple dress and wrap. “Both perhaps.” His mouth crooked and revealed white teeth. “Those are very old tomes. Valuable.”
She did not dispute that fact. Nor did she explain how she had got her hands on such valuable antiquity. She balked at fearing him. “You are not planning to steal them from me, are you, Lord Roxburghe?”
“You know who I am?” His eyes narrowed perceptively on her hair, then her height. “I would remember if we’d met.”
Rose withheld a frown beneath his scrutiny.
It was too true that she was memorable to people for all the wrong reasons.
He would be no exception. “I was one of your many minions lining the street when you passed through Castleton.” She graciously inclined her head in an act only the dimmest would construe as subservient.
“No doubt the speed with which you rode through the village, you missed us all standing along the streets cheering your return. ’Tis understandable if you missed the village entirely, small as we are, my lord. ”
Amusement lifted the corners of his mouth, though his eyes as they peered into hers remained more thoughtful. She wanted to turn away from the disturbing gaze. No one, not even the lowest field hand had ever eyed her thusly, in a way that caused a curious sensation in her stomach.
“A thousand pardons, m’lady. Had I seen you standing there, I would have surely stopped—” His hand motioned to her hair, and she thought he might touch her. “If only to discern the color of your curls. Like a radiant sunset burning against the ocean. The color of warm cinnamon.”
Her hair? A radiant sunset? Warm cinnamon indeed.
She stared speechless and saw the laughter in his eyes.
But before she could give him the rebuke he deserved, he humbled himself with a light bow.
“My horse has come up lame,” he said with seriousness.
“I am seeking shelter for my men and me tonight and a conversation with the prior of this keep.”
Rose looked beyond him. The abbey did not have enough food in its stores to feed his small army. Nor did she understand who Jack had seen crossing the bridge.
“There are only four of us,” he said, clearly reading her mind. “I will compensate this abbey for its trouble, Miss—”
“Friar Tucker is not yet returned.”
If she had not been so intently staring at his face, and noticing the perfect cleft on his chin, she would have missed seeing his lips tighten. “Is there another with whom I can request lodging?”
“You are asking permission to stay here?” she said, surprised that a man as powerful as Lord Roxburghe would seek consent.
“As a mere formality,” he said, leaving no doubt he was a man without convention, dangerous, and completely capable of doing as he pleased, yet, still possessed with the illusion of manners.
But in the end, the storm decided for her and she had to get everyone inside.
The abbey sat on the highest point in the area.
The last lightning storm that struck had burned down the watermill.
Friar Tucker already blamed her for that incident, an experiment on electricity gone awry.
He would be even more displeased if she allowed similar harm to befall the new Roxburghe laird or his men.
Unfortunately, his lordship’s rank forbade her from putting him on a pallet in the kitchen or in the stable with his horse where he deserved.
Rose sighed, knowing she would be giving up her much-coveted room to him tonight.