Chapter One #3
“Yes. Of course. We shall leave. Come, Nicky.” She took the child’s hand and took three lopsided steps away from him. Then she hesitated and said with a further heartbreaking attempt at dignity. “This is the path to Lulworth, I take it?”
“It is, but you’re not going to Lulworth tonight.”
“Indeed we are,” she said as certainly as a female could whose teeth chattered like Spanish castanets.
Gabe ignored her. He took Trojan’s reins and knotted them lightly on the horse’s neck. He pulled out his caped overcoat from the saddlebag and took the bandbox from the boy.
“What are you doing? That’s my bandbox,” she said. “Give it back at once!”
Gabe tied the bandbox to the saddle, put on the overcoat and held out his hand to her. “Come on.”
She pressed back against the rocks at the rear of the path. “I won’t!” She gave a panic-stricken glance at the horse and in a different voice said, “I can’t!”
He shrugged and swung the boy onto a ledge above the path.
“Let him go!” In desperation she swung a fist at Gabe, but he caught it easily.
She lifted her fist to swing at him and he caught her hand in his. At that moment the moon came out from behind the clouds, flooding the cliff top—and the woman’s face—with clear, silvery light.
Gabriel had had the breath knocked out of him a dozen times. Each time he’d thought he was dying.
He’d been kicked in the head by a horse once. It had scrambled his wits for a while.
And a couple of times in his life he’d been so drunk that he’d lost all sense of time and place.
Seeing her face in the moonlight was like all of those rolled into one. And more. Gabe’s breathing stopped. He forgot how to speak. He was unable to think. He could only stare. And stare. And stare.
She had the sweetest face he’d ever seen, round and sweet and sad and somehow…right, framed by a cloud of dark, wavy hair. An angel come to earth. With the most kissable mouth in the world.
He swallowed, drinking in the sight of her like a man facing a waterfall after a lifetime of thirst.
She gazed back at him. Her eyes were beautiful, he thought, eyes a man could happily drown in. He wondered what color they were.
“Release me this instant!” the angel snapped, and Gabriel’s breath came back in a great whoosh of air. The angel was very, very human. And very, very frightened.
He held her clenched fist up, nearly at eye level.
“This,” Gabe shook her right fist a little, “would have hurt you more than it would have hurt me.” He turned her fist palm up and explained.
“See how your thumb is placed here? If you’d connected with my head, it would have been shockingly bruised, maybe even broken. I have a very hard head.”
She frowned uncertainly. His tactics were confusing her. As he’d intended. Tension still vibrated in the small, rounded body, but she was listening.
“Next time you go to punch someone—anyone—some poor innocent fellow who accidentally rides his horse over you in the dark and keeps saving you from falling off a cliff, for instance—hold your fist like this.” He showed her, rearranging her fingers.
“And hit with the heel of your hand—not your knuckles—whack upward to the fellow’s nose.
” He looked down at her and added, “Or his chin, if you’re too short to reach the nose. ”
Her eyes narrowed. “I am not short.”
“No, of course not,” he assured her solemnly.
“Better still.” He bent and picked up a stone and pressed it into her palm.
“If you hit a man with that, it would really pack a punch. Make sure it is large enough that it fits in your palm and you can get a good grip, but not so small that your fingers can close right around it. Hit the man with the stone, not your hand. Next time you are in fear for your life, remember the stone.” He released her hands and stepped back.
She clutched the stone tightly, staring at him in baffled suspicion.
Gabriel repressed a smile. The look on her face was priceless. Surprise tactics always had been his forte.
“You know I’m not going to hurt you or the boy. So just be sensible and get on my horse.”
“I—I don’t like horses. I prefer to walk.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s five miles and there’s a storm brewing.”
“I don’t care. I’ve walked much farther than five miles before.”
“Not in the dark and in a storm and with only one shoe,” he reminded her. “Come, madam, I’ll lift you up.”
She fended him off, one-handed. “No, no, I can’t!”
She was genuinely frightened, Gabe saw.
“It’s all right, Trojan is a very gentle horse. There’s really no need to be scared—”
“I’m not scared!”
“Of course you aren’t,” Gabriel agreed. She was terrified. “Don’t worry, I’ll hold on to you and you’ll be safe as houses. I’ll just lift you up—”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort!”
“That’s your last word?”
She gave him a stiff little nod. “It is.”
“Excellent,” said Gabriel and before she knew it, he lifted her by the waist and set her sideways onto the horse.
Trojan, bless him, stood steady as a rock.
Almost in the same movement, Gabe swung up behind her and wrapped one arm firmly around her waist before she could jump off. She gave a small, stifled scream.
In her hand she still clutched the stone he’d given her. She raised her fist and waved it, fraught with indecision. Gabe waited.
Trojan stamped his hooves and moved restlessly.
She gasped and dropped the stone. Her free arm flailed desperately, touched Trojan’s mane, recoiled, and then groped around for something to hang on to. She found Gabe’s thigh. And gripped it tight.
He held out his hand to the boy, perched on the rocky ledge, watching unhappily. “Come on, Nicky, take my hand.”
The child hesitated. Both of them were scared stiff of Trojan, Gabe saw.
“I promise you won’t fall. Just take my hand and I’ll swing you up behind me.”
Again the boy shook his head.
“N-Nicky can’t ride,” she told him through clenched teeth.
Gabe said patiently, “I’m not asking him to. I’ll do the riding. All he has to do is sit behind me and hang on.”
“I can’t ride, either.” Her hand gripped him tightly.
“I know. I’m holding you safe, see?” He squeezed her waist gently. She was sitting so rigidly he could snap her in two. “I’ll hold him safe, too.”
She said in a voice that shook, “If one of your hands is holding me and the other is for Nicky, who will hold the horse?”
“I will. With my thighs.”
“Your what?” Faint outrage showed through the terror.
He smiled to himself. She obviously had no idea it was his thigh she was hanging on to with all her might. “They’re very strong thighs, and he’s a very well-behaved horse. Now come on, Nicky, that rain is almost upon us. Get on.”
As he spoke several large drops of rain pattered down. “Do it, Nicky,” she said at last.
His misgivings obvious, the child hesitantly reached out and took hold of Gabe’s arm.
“Good boy. Now put your left foot on my boot here and when I give you the word, jump and swing your right leg over the horse behind me. You’re perfectly safe. I won’t let you drop.” The boy obeyed, closing his eyes and making a blind leap of faith. In a moment he was seated behind Gabe on Trojan.
“Now lift my coat over the top of you so that when the rain starts, you don’t get wet. You can hold onto my belt or my waist, whichever you prefer,” Gabe told him. He felt the coat lift, then two little arms wrapped around his waist in a convulsive grip.
Gabe nudged his horse and Trojan moved off as the rain started. The woman and boy clutched on to Gabe like grim death.
Icy needles of rain pelted down on Gabe’s face and trickled down the inside of his coat. He was cold and wet and he should have been miserable.
Instead, he grinned, suddenly exhilarated. Until an hour ago his life had stretched out before him, an endless stretch of pointlessness and ease. A life sentence of tranquility.
Now, suddenly—blessedly!—he had a problem, a difficulty, trouble. And she was sitting rigid and unbending in his arms like a small, wet piece of wood, her eyes screwed tight shut, clutching his thigh as if she would never let go; his own little piece of trouble.
It suited Gabe perfectly.
Callie closed her eyes and clung on, enduring.
If she’d thought this man threatened her son in any way, she would have fought him, but he’d been kind to Nicky, and to her, she admitted.
Besides, she was all out of fight. She didn’t know where he was taking her, but it couldn’t be worse than trudging along a dark cliff top in freezing rain, not knowing where she was.
The worst thing was the horse.
She loathed horses. She hadn’t been on one since she was six and Mama…She shivered, seeing it in her mind, as vividly as if it were yesterday, the horse’s hoof smashing into Mama’s head. And the blood…
Even Rupert hadn’t been able to get her near a horse again.
But if it meant Nicky would be taken to warmth and safety sooner, well, she could put up with anything.
“Nicky, are you all right?” she called.
“Yes, Mama.” She felt the flutter of small fingers against her waist and she clutched her son’s hand thankfully. Her own personal lifeline.
“The coat has several capes,” Gabriel Renfrew told her, his breath warm against her ear. “Nicky is warm and dry, so stop worrying about him. You, on the other hand, are frozen. Lean back against me and I’ll button my coat closed. We’ll all be warmer that way.”
But Callie could not bring herself to move. If she did, she was sure she’d fall off.
“Don’t worry, I have you safe,” he said again. The deep rumble of his voice was soothing, but still she couldn’t bring herself to change her posture one iota. She sat with a spine so straight she barely touched him, her eyes shut tight, her hand clinging to Nicky’s fingers.
He sighed and pulled her right against his chest. “Now lean against me while I see to this.”
Callie opened her eyes for a brief moment, then squeezed them shut, instantly. He was buttoning up the coat. With both hands. Nobody was holding the reins of the horse. She couldn’t bear to look.
“It’s all right to breathe, you know,” he murmured in her ear. “There, that’s better. Comfortable?”
Comfortable? On a horse? She shuddered.
“Pommel sticking into you, is it?” He adjusted her position so she sat across his lap, held firmly in a circle made up of his arm and his broad, warm chest, cocooned within his coat.
“This is kidnapping,” she muttered.
“Yes, disgraceful, I know. But what could I do? You were all wet and cold.”
“So are you, now,” she pointed out.
“Ah, but a misery shared is a misery halved. Not that I’m the least bit miserable,” he added.
Neither was Callie. She felt warm and, strangely, almost safe—despite the fact that she was on a horse. And forced into an intimate position with a man she’d never met.
It was most…unsettling, the feeling of his thigh under her bottom, shifting with each movement of the horse, hard and muscular. And the heat and hardness of his chest against her…breast. And his arms, bracketing her body, so warm and strong and intimate.
But his big, strong body threw out the warmth her body craved and she was cold, so very cold. Gradually, almost against her will, she pressed herself closer to him, her frozen body greedily soaking up the heat and the strength of him.
Her cheek rested against the fine linen of his shirt. He smelled of horse and cologne and leather and wood smoke…and the skin of a man…
She fancied she could hear his heart beating, a steady, soothing thump, thump, thump…
It was strange, she thought; Rupert had smelled of horse and cologne and leather, too, but it was very different.
Stop it! she told herself. This kind of stupid imagining, this stupid longing for something she knew she couldn’t have, had made her miserable in the past. She was older and wiser now. She would make her own happiness, not depend on others—on men—for it.
She was in England and would be safe with Tibby very soon. This…weakness was just because she was cold and wet and tired. And because he was big and warm and strong.
That was the trouble. Because he was bigger and stronger, he’d got his own way. As men always did. Men never listened. Callie had had enough of it. Once she got to Tibby’s she’d never have to take orders from a man again.
“Are you warmer, now?” he said. His voice was deep and the rumble of it reverberated in his chest, against her cheek.
“Yes,” she said, and her conscience forced her to add, “Thank you.”
“Nicky,” he said in a louder voice, “We’re going to go faster, so hold on tight.”
Callie heard a muffled assent from Nicky.
He didn’t sound worried. But then the horse lengthened its strides and she closed her eyes and clung on tight, trying not to see the flashing hooves in her mind, concentrating on the man who held her so securely, even though the rest of the world was bouncing up and down…
“We’re here,” the deep voice said in her ear sometime later. “Are you awake?”
Callie opened her eyes and stared up at him. “Awake?” she exclaimed incredulously. “Of course I’m awake!”
“Really?” She saw a flash of white teeth as he grinned. She turned her head to see where “here” was.
It was a substantial house, built of stone and rising to three stories, with dormer windows set into a slate roof. A single wisp of smoke curled lazily from one of many chimneys.
They rode under a decorative stone arch into a cobbled courtyard. A large black dog ran out barking but its barks turned to wriggles of silent pleasure as it recognized its master.
“Where are we?” she demanded, stiffening. “I thought…This isn’t Lulworth.”
“I didn’t say I’d take you to Lulworth. It’s too far on a night like this and even Trojan has his limits.”
“Then where—”
“Welcome to my home,” he said.