Chapter Nine
“I wish for ye to show me this place called Hyde Park,” Jamie announced after lunch as he entered the sitting room where Mari was working on a piece of embroidery near the fireplace.
“Ouch! Drat.” Mari missed a stitch, piercing her finger instead.
She wasn’t any better at needlecraft now than she had been as a child.
She licked the tiny drop of blood off and looked up at Jamie who appeared fixated on her offended finger.
Slowly, she lowered it from her mouth. His golden eyes followed her movement.
“Why do you want to see Hyde Park?”
Jamie came in and sat down on the sofa, bypassing several of the ivory satin-brocaded chairs the women callers favored.
Mari had told him once, despite the chairs looking fragile with their ornately carved legs and arms, they were sturdy enough to hold him.
Jamie had looked skeptical, not that she could take him to account for that.
His large frame did fill nearly a third of the chaise.
He shrugged as he stretched his long legs out, bumping a glass-topped table set with china figurines that rattled dangerously. “A lass asked if I’d been to the park yet,” he replied, shifting his boots away from the delicate arrangement. “She offered to show me the place.”
“Who asked? Violetta or Amelia?” Mari could just imagine either of those two being so bold.
“Neither. Well, at least not the first offer. I think the lass’s name was Olivia.”
Mari hid her surprise. Olivia Ashley was a quiet girl, almost even more timid than Abigail.
How in the world did she ever work up the courage to ask Jamie to accompany her to Hyde Park?
Mari gave Jamie a sideways look. The man probably gave the poor thing his dimpled smile, flirt that he was, and she fancied him taken with her.
“Why did you not go with her?”
“I have nae intentions of courting the lass. I suspect a carriage ride would make her think I did.”
Well, Mari had to admit, at least Jamie was not leading Olivia on. Then she frowned. “If you took a carriage ride with me, people would think the same.” That simply would not do now that she had met Nicholas.
“Who said anything about a carriage ride? I thought to take the saddle horses. They need riding.”
Mari shook her head. “I do not ride well.” She remembered how uncomfortable the horse had felt the night Jillian and she escaped from Wesley. Besides, the beasts were huge.
Jamie grinned. “I remember, lass. ’Tis a reason why ye should get on one. There’s a wee gentle mare in the stable that would do ye no harm.”
Mari put her embroidery aside. “Do you think I am afraid of horses?”
He tilted his head to one side, studying her. “I think mayhap ye are.”
She hoped he didn’t realize how close to truth he spoke.
She never had really trusted the brutes could be controlled by just small straps of reins.
Never mind that Jillian rode both sidesaddle and astride as though she’d been born to it.
“I certainly am not afraid. I just prefer not to sit on one’s back. ”
“Ye just need to get the feel of it,” Jamie answered. “’Tis a pity ye have those magnificent Andalusians at Newburn and ye are scared to ride.”
Mari glared at him. “I am not afraid.”
“Nae? Then prove it, lass.”
“I do not have to prove anything to you, sirrah. Ladies pursue more delicate activities.”
He raised one of his brows as he regarded the uneven stitches on her embroidery loop. “Ye have skills such as running a household then? Keeping the larders stocked, the accounts in order and the servants well trained?”
Mari hesitated. “Well, no. Jillian took care of that.”
“Jillian also sat a horse well.”
“That does not signify. What I meant was young ladies pursue full social calendars. I dance quite well.”
“A fine skill indeed.”
He was making fun of her. Mari felt her temper rising. “Do you dance, sirrah?”
“Nae. I see little need for a mon to prance about.”
Of course he didn’t. Dancing was much too refined for someone who wanted to carry a huge sword slung to his back, to say nothing about knives strung to him.
As if… Mari gave Jamie a calculating look.
She had the perfect solution to stop him from badgering her about riding. She smiled. “I have an offer for you.”
He grinned, his dimple showing. “I like the sound of that.”
The strange, tingling sensation washed over her again. Only Jamie could turn an innocent statement into something more…more…well, she didn’t know what exactly, but something resonated deep in her belly. She took a deep breath to gather her wits. Jamie would never agree to her idea.
“I will learn to ride if you will learn to dance.”
His eyes widened, and then the golden color turned molten as he widened his grin.
“Done,” he said.
How had she let herself get inveigled into doing this? Mari looked at the animal who stood patiently waiting by the stoop near the stable door the next morning. The mare might look docile, but looks could be deceiving.
Jamie led a sorrel gelding out of the small barn, and Mari looked at him in surprise. “I thought you wanted to exercise Nero,” she said, referring to the Andalusian Jamie had ridden to London.
“Nero is a green colt. I’ll nae have him spook yer bonny mare.”
Mari looked back at the dapple-grey horse whose soulful brown eyes watched her. “So you are admitting this animal can act up?”
“All horses can, lass. ’Tis up to the rider to see they behave.” Jamie looped his reins over the hitching post and approached Mari with a glint in his eyes. “Much like ’tis up to me to see that ye behave.”
“What? Of all the—” The air whooshed out of her lungs as Jamie lifted her easily and settled her on the mare. His hand slipped up the split riding skirt, cupping Mari’s calf and lifting it over the horn of the saddle. She swatted at his hand. “What do you think you are doing?”
Jamie gave her a patient look he might have directed at a dim-witted child and tucked her leg down. “I am positioning ye so ye dinnae fall off the other side.” He smoothed the velvet skirt over her half-boot and stepped back. “There. Now ye should be secure.”
Mari felt anything but secure, and it was not all due to her precarious seat on top of the horse.
Jamie had touched her leg—her bare leg—as nonchalantly as if there were nothing untoward about the act at all.
He truly was a rogue from those wild isles of his.
And yet…the warmth from his large, calloused palm had sent heat shooting the entire length of her leg, culminating in a slow pulsing at the juncture of her thighs.
Mari squirmed in the saddle only to find the pulsation increased rather pleasantly against the added friction of leather.
Her face warmed, and she was grateful Jamie had turned toward his own mount.
He vaulted onto the back of the sorrel and glanced over at her. “Are ye all right? Yer face is a bit red. Ye truly have nothing to fear.”
Merciful heavens. She did not know which she feared most—the horse or Jamie. They were both dangerous. If the man knew what kind of reaction she had just had… Well. He would not find out. Mari shifted somewhat gingerly, glad the sensation was subsiding. “I am fine.”
With a footman following a discreet distance behind them, Jamie kept the horses to a slow walk, keeping her mare between the sorrel and the sidewalk as they maneuvered the short distance from the Mayfair streets to the park. He reined in as they approached Stanhope Gate and gave a low whistle.
“I had no idea such a glade existed in this sooty city.”
Mari’s mare stopped obediently beside him. “The park is hardly a glade.”
“It looks like one, except for the wee loch.”
“That is the Serpentine.”
“The road leads around it, nae?” Not waiting for an answer, he urged the sorrel forward with Mari’s horse following and the footman trailing. “’Tis a peaceful place.”
“That is because it is early.” She pointed to another road surrounding the park. “By this afternoon, the Ring will be full of carriages—ladies wearing the latest bonnets and debutantes with beaus and chaperones.”
“Must ye always be chaperoned?”
“Of course. It insures liberties are not taken.”
Jamie glanced behind him. “Is that why we have young Joseph along?”
“In a way. Effie refuses to get nearer a horse than the inside of a carriage. Someone had to come with us.”
He looked back at the young man again and then at Mari, a skeptical expression on his face. “The lad can barely handle a sword.”
Mari refrained from rolling her eyes. “Must everything be about weapons with you? Not everyone goes about armed as you do.” At least Jamie wasn’t carrying the claymore today.
Jamie adjusted the smaller rapier at his side and patted the dirk in his belt.
“It makes a mon think twice before startin’ something.
The more weapons I carry, the shorter the argument.
” He glanced once more at Joseph, who had stopped to talk to a lass selling posies.
“Is the lad supposed to protect ye from me?”
Mari did look heavenward then. “Protect, protect, protect. I have told you I do not need your protection, nor do I need Joseph to protect me from you—” She stopped as Jamie’s gaze locked with hers, his expression suddenly reminding her of a wolf spotting its prey.
She drew a shaky breath at the intense look. “Do…do I?”
His eyes smoldered briefly and he grinned suddenly, dimple showing. “You decide,” he said and urged his mount forward.