Chapter 3 #2
“The Duke of Windbourne has a reputation,” Rivers warned.
Fennyman smiled slowly. “I know, and he’s arriving with Miss Reynolds’s Arabians tomorrow. That’s why they’re not here. He got delayed by a storm in Calais.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” Rivers demanded, feeling something he couldn’t name. Nerves, maybe. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to control him.”
“As we discussed, we can’t really control anyone,” Fennyman pointed out. “But I do think he will be the ingredient that pushes Skyburn into the mix.”
Rivers nodded. “Fine. Fine. If we must. But if this one goes badly, it won’t be my fault this time.”
Fennyman nodded, for they both knew how dangerous things had gotten before. “Well, we must roll the dice and see.”
“You don’t like dice,” Rivers huffed. “You like games where you can count the cards.”
“It’s true, but perhaps I’ll weight the dice,” Fennyman said with a wink.
“You do that?” the Duke of Rivers asked, aghast.
“Only for certain people.”
“Do you do that to people you like?” Rivers asked.
Fennyman smiled. “Why would you think that I like anyone?”
Rivers shook his head. “You can go ahead and pretend as if you don’t like me, but I know that you do.”
Fennyman stared at him for a long moment. “The arrogance of aristocrats is really breathtaking.”
Harlowe nodded. “Hear! Hear!”
“I bet you think Harlowe’s your best friend,” said Fennyman.
“Aren’t you, Harlowe?” Rivers asked suddenly, quite surprised.
Harlowe let out a bleat of alarm. “Well, we are essential to each other, Your Grace, but friend might be the wrong word to use. Friend means that there is a certain sort of equanimity and equality between two people, and you and I are inherently unequal.”
Rivers frowned. “Are you saying you’d like to be a duke, Harlowe?”
Harlowe’s eyes shot wide with horror.
“Actually, it’s a rather interesting idea,” Rivers mused. “I wonder if I could have a word with the king. You’d be quite good at it. No one would like it, of course. And I don’t know if I could give you up, but…”
Harlowe blurted, “Please don’t, Your Grace. I don’t want to be a duke. It’s terrible. It’s a horrible existence.”
Rivers let out a breath of shock. “You think my life is a terrible existence?”
Harlowe stared at him for a long moment.
“You do!” Rivers said.
“It’s why you need so much help, Your Grace,” Harlowe said.
And Fennyman began to laugh and laugh and laugh.
Rivers scowled. “Humans are the very devil.”
Harlowe sneezed.
If Ruby had had good sense, she would have gotten into her coach and gone straight home, but she didn’t need to have good sense, so she did not.
Instead, she found herself wandering across the paddock outside the stables, with its high fences, eager to explore the copse of oak trees in the far corner. Skyburn followed her.
She loved that he followed her. She loved whatever was happening between them. It was exciting and she followed her instincts by not departing, by seeing just how far this meeting would take them.
Her instincts had served her well all these years. She had been taught to go boldly, to seize whatever she wanted, and she wanted him. The banter that they exchanged, the play of all of it within those moments in the stable, had made one thing clear.
She knew what she wanted. Him. That voice deep inside her, which never let her down, had sung loudly, and she was going to obey it.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” he rumbled behind her.
“Indeed they are,” she agreed as she walked through the grass. “There’s nothing like them.”
“When did you first fall in love with horses?” he asked, so close she wondered if he would reach out and take her hand.
She licked her lips, eager for his touch. “When I was small,” she said, “and I realized that I could take off at a speed that no human could ever achieve on their own, that I could leave the world behind.”
He let out a soft laugh.
“Oh?” she queried. “Do I amuse you?”
“No, I hear myself in your words.”
“It must be common,” she said.
“I don’t think it is,” he replied as they stopped before the group of ancient trees that had no doubt seen countless men and women beneath their branches.
“I think most people ride horses to achieve certain ends, to get from one place to the next. I think there’s only a certain set of us that love to ride like the wind.
Is that why you want an Arabian? Because of the legend that they can race like the wind across the desert. Untouched and unmatched.”
Unmatched? Yes. She supposed so. She wanted a life unmatched.
She glanced back over her shoulder. “Perhaps,” she whispered.
She stopped before an oak tree, tracing her fingers over the rough bark, and then she looked out to the paddock. There were no Arabians out to pasture at that moment. Only the good sort of English horses that had made the land proud and strong for a good long time.
Arabians were becoming more common because it was impossible to ignore how marvelous they were and how they could influence the world of racing, but they were temperamental. Perhaps she was temperamental too.
She turned to him. “So you think you and I are of a kind?”
He smiled slowly. “We both like to have what we want, don’t we?”
“And what is it that you want?” she asked.
“You,” he growled softly, easily, as if it was the most natural thing in all the world. “I want to kiss you.”
She laughed again, but the sound was filled with her own powerful and shocking longing. “How wonderful because I want you to kiss me too.”
His eyes flared. “This is risky.”
“Yes, it is, if I was the usual sort of lady, but I’m not, so kiss away, my lord.”
He seemed to like the challenge. He took a step forward, eased his hand to her cheek, then slid it into her thick curls, tilting her head so that the brim of her tricorn was out of the way.
She contemplated his sensual lips eagerly. He studied hers too, as if they were both trying to get the lay of the land, and then he lowered his mouth to hers. Much to her surprise, it was not a kiss of conquering. No, it was a kiss of softness, of teasing, of temptation.
He took his time. He was not interested in being fast and hard.
No, she realized he was interested in making his mark, in showing her just how good he was at this. And, by God, he was good. His lips traveled over hers, and his tongue teased the line of her mouth.
Her hands went to his broad, strong waist, savoring the strength there. He was a powerful man, and she adored it. Softly, she opened her mouth to him. She wanted to taste him, and when his tongue touched hers, she let out a low moan of approval.
Their tongues danced against each other. Their kiss increased, growing ever wilder, stronger, until, at last, he lifted his head and gazed down at her with passion-drunk eyes. “I don’t think there’ll be any stopping us.”
“Are you going to make love to me right here?” she breathed, knowing he would not. Knowing they could not. “In a paddock?”
His eyes flared. “Good God, woman, you tempt me. Do you want me to?”
She shook her head, though it took all her will. “No,” she said.
“Why?” he asked, his gaze aflame with need for her.
“Because I think you do want me, but just because someone wants something doesn’t mean they should actually have it,” she murmured.
She’d never done anything quite as bold as this.
She’d never kissed a man she’d just met.
She’d never been so saucy. And yet she knew, deep down, this was right.
He was hers. “I think that I want to savor you. I don’t want to gobble you down like a quick sweet. ”
His lips parted again.
He clearly liked the idea of being gobbled down, and then, as if reality was puncturing the passion that encapsulated them, they heard gentlemen talking out by the paddock.
She tensed. “There you have it,” she teased. “No making love today, my lord. You must wait. And so must I. We must see if our passion is fleeting or if it burns with any sort of meaning.”
“I think it might kill me,” he groaned.
She laughed softly. “I don’t think it will. As a matter of fact, I think that waiting, anticipating, will only increase your hunger.”
He lowered his head to her forehead. “I think you’re right,” he admitted. “I don’t want to let you go. You’ve done something to me, Ruby.”
“And you to me,” she confessed before she slipped away from him.
As she strode through the grass, hardly believing the turn her life had just taken, she glanced back over her shoulder, smiling.
This this was the sort of thing that she had secretly yearned for with all her heart, someone who could meet her passion for passion, witty phrase for witty phrase, and not bow to arbitrary rules made to imprison rather than to free.