Vying for the Viscount

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  Hudson rolled his neck and tried to ease the strain of his muscles. He’d fallen asleep in the chair in his study. Again.

  When he’d gotten back to Hawksworth, he pulled out his father’s Bible and flipped through it, his thumb rolling back and forth on the edge of the medallion on the bookmark.

  How was one supposed to go about finding the answers to his questions in a book that was so old? There were stories of people asking Jesus for help and advice, but the man Hudson had related to the most was the one who had ended up on his knees, asking Jesus to help his unbelief instead of what he’d come asking Jesus for in the first place.

  Hudson believed. He’d believed for a long time. That wasn’t his problem.

  Was it?

  Just because he wasn’t sure God was going to make something better didn’t mean he didn’t believe in God.

  Or did it?

  If he truly believed God was loving and powerful, wouldn’t that mean he could trust that God knew what He was doing? That there’d been a reason for Hudson to spend years in India?

  The night in his chair hadn’t brought him clarity. Neither had a cup of coffee, nor practically dunking his head in the washbasin.

  Perhaps a good, long ride would put everything in perspective, though the idea of going back to the Heath right now made him want to turn around and go back to bed. Still, even if he didn’t go to the Heath, the back of a horse was a good place to view life from.

  A familiar green riding habit was already in the stable when he arrived. It was possibly the first thing that had gone right for him since yesterday’s race.

  “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “I’ve missed our rides.”

  “As have I. My father’s horses simply aren’t the same.”

  Hudson winced at the idea of even comparing his horses to the ones her father had, but he kept that to himself.

  “I believe they’ve got our mounts ready. Shall we?” She stepped away from the horse she’d been petting, and a beam of sunlight pierced through the large window and lit upon her face, making her smile glow that much more.

  He knew he’d been about to say something, but now the words were stuck somewhere behind the realization that his friend was more than pretty. She was beautiful. She hadn’t needed anyone’s help to secure a husband. She’d only needed to make herself available.

  Which meant that soon he’d lose her. Would there be a way to maintain a friendship after she married? After he married?

  Was this what Aaron meant? Had he seen that Hudson’s friendship with Bianca had a time limit? Was he encouraging him to cherish it while it lasted?

  He cleared his throat when he noticed she was giving him a strange look. How long had he been standing there, staring at her? “Er, which horse are you riding?”

  “Odysseus,” she said with a sigh.

  “I thought you liked Odysseus.”

  “I do. He’s just so much shorter than Hades.”

  “Then I’ll ride Athena.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. “She’s still taller, but at least I won’t be towering over you.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  For a few moments, they stood there, not moving, not speaking, and for Hudson at least, barely breathing.

  “Okay, then.” She pursed her lips and stepped aside while the grooms scrambled to get Athena saddled. “We’ll have to ride the lands. We’re later than normal, and the Heath will already be closed for the morning.”

  “I’m sure the rest of the countryside is picturesque.”

  “Oh yes. There’s a spot just west of here.”

  Hudson bowed low and swept his arm out wide. “Lead on.”

  She smiled that brilliant smile at him again—was it truly just the way the sunlight caught it?—and, once mounted, set off across one of his paddocks. Hudson spurred his horse to join her, and Owen followed several lengths behind on Atalanta.

  The area was largely flat, but as they went west and skirted a few areas of farmland, small rolling hills joined the terrain. Hills might even be a generous term, but the slight embankments served to create a block to prevent him from looking back at Newmarket. He truly felt like he’d been able to leave life behind for a while.

  “I enjoyed the dinner party at Lord and Lady Hawthorne’s.” Bianca shook her head and gave a little laugh. “I’d never met Lady Adelaide until she came to invite me, but I think I like her.”

  “Lord Trent gave an interesting introduction as well. I confess, I was somewhat nervous about it.”

  “I imagine dinner parties in India were quite different.”

  “Yes. Eating food is about the only commonality.”

  “What if he’d had a boar?”

  “Isn’t that a pig?”

  “Mm-hmmm,” she said with a nod. “The eyeballs are a delicacy.”

  “Only to someone who has never eaten them.”

  She blinked. “You’ve had boar’s head?”

  He shrugged, enjoying that, in this at least, he knew more than she did. “Goat. But I would think they’d be quite similar. Eyeballs are rather chewy. Really, the only way to eat them is just to swallow them down.”

  “No wonder you find our cuisine boring.”

  He wanted to correct her, that it was more an issue of blandness, but the truth was his cook made boring food. If he offered her a bonus, would she learn to cook with spices like turmeric, cumin, and cardamom?

  She cleared her throat. “Have you seen Aaron since yesterday?”

  “Yes. I went to see him yesterday. He’s . . .” What was he? Right? Wrong? Bitter? Realistic? “I think he was more surprised than angry to see Lord Rigsby.”

  “That’s good.” Her gaze dropped to her reins.

  What was she thinking? Was she thinking about Lord Rigsby? How close had the two of them gotten? Was she going to turn away from Aaron? “Are you thinking about Lord Rigsby?”

  “What?” Her head popped up. “No. Well, yes, but mostly in that I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know about him.”

  “Should you have known a lot about him?”

  She didn’t answer. He didn’t really expect her to, but he truly wanted to know. He wanted to quiz her about Lord Rigsby and Lord Brimsbane, wanted to make her promise she’d still come riding at Hawksworth after she married.

  It had been mere weeks since she came into his life, but he couldn’t imagine living in England without her. Restlessness drove through his body, making him want to spur the horse beneath him into a hard run so he could leave the sensation behind.

  “My lord!”

  Hudson and Bianca pulled their horses to a stop and looked back several yards to where Owen was dismounting from Atalanta at the base of the small rise they’d just come down. Without word, they both directed their mounts to return to the groom.

  “I think she’s picked up something in her shoe,” the groom said as he ran a hand down the horse’s leg. “She started hobbling coming over the rise. Nothing feels wrong, and she seems alright standing here.” Owen straightened and tucked a wisp of hair that had escaped his queue behind his ear.

  “At least we haven’t gone far,” Bianca said. “It won’t be too long for you to walk her back to the stable.”

  Owen said nothing, just made a pointed look from her to Hudson and back.

  Bianca gestured a hand over the empty countryside. “Who’s even going to see us?”

  Hudson coughed. “I don’t think our immense solitude is an argument in favor of his leaving.”

  “If it makes you feel better, walk Atalanta back and then return with another horse. It won’t take you long.”

  With a sigh, Owen agreed, because the only other option was for Hudson to take the horse back and let Owen ride Athena. That was probably what he should have done, but the idea of being alone with Bianca, even if it was on horseback in the middle of a field, was rather appealing.

  Perhaps it was what he needed to sort out this mess in his head. If he could talk to her a
bout it without distractions or attentive ears, would he be able to determine what was bothering him?

  Owen took the mare’s reins and walked her back over the ride toward Hawksworth.

  After a few moments, nothing could be heard but the light wind rustling the grass and a distant bird calling to its mate.

  “Shall we continue?” Bianca asked. “At the rate we’ve plodded along Owen will be able to catch us easily.”

  “Why don’t we wait here for a bit? Rest the horses.” He kicked his feet free of the stirrups and swung his leg over before Bianca could agree.

  “What?” she said through a laugh. “It’s not as if we’ve been on a cross-country trek. There isn’t even a stump out here for me to remount with.” She pointed to a scraggly group of shrubs. “Those are hardly going to suffice.”

  He wrapped Athena’s reins around one of the inconsequential plants and then reached up toward Bianca. “I’ll help you up when it’s time to return.”

  She stared at him, eyes narrowed.

  He wiggled his fingers. “Come along. I feel like this is a part of England I haven’t seen yet.”

  “And you can’t see it from the back of your horse?” She shook her head but shifted her hold on the reins so he could grasp her waist and help her down from her side-seated position.

  He’d noticed her strength when they’d danced, and he noticed it again in a way that made his heart work just a little bit harder.

  Once she was on the ground, he took her horse and secured it to another shrub before taking a few moments to try to get himself under control. Whether it was Aaron’s statements, the Bible searching, or a night of sleeping in a chair, something was shifting in Hudson’s mind, and he wasn’t sure what it was.

  All he knew was he didn’t recognize it. Riding a horse wasn’t clearing his mind. Perhaps sitting with her would.

  When he came back to Bianca, she was looking out at the view, no longer smiling like she had been. Was this sadness new, or had it been there earlier and he just hadn’t seen it?

  She waved a hand in front of her. “Does India look like this?”

  “Parts of it. Yet, at the same time, no. It doesn’t look the same or feel the same, but there’s something familiar about it.”

  Her toe dislodged a tuft of grass and kicked it his way. “I would think grass pretty much looks like grass no matter where you go.”

  He kicked the tuft away and then sat down to run his hand through the blades. “You would think that, and yet it isn’t true.”

  He lay on his back and pointed at the sky. “Even the sky looks different. Not right now—though the sun never seems to be where I expect it to be—but at night, everything looks strange. I remember on the boat, the few nights I managed to be well enough to walk on the deck, the sky told me I was farther and farther from everything I knew.”

  She sat next to him but didn’t seem to share his relaxation.

  A few feet away, the horses happily munched on grass, while overhead birds circled and chirped. Every living thing in the vicinity looked happy except for her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She jumped and looked down at him, her lips curving as quickly as they normally did. The corners of her eyes didn’t crinkle though. “Nothing’s wrong. Why do you ask?”

  “Because this moment is sheer perfection and you aren’t enjoying it.”

  “I’m enjoying it.” She tipped her head back and threw her arms out to the side. “See?”

  He rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand. “I see.”

  Perhaps he was truly seeing now. Was this what Aaron meant about marriage being about giving oneself? Hudson wanted to make her happy, wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was feeling. He never asked Lady Rebecca questions like that—never even thought to.

  He pictured Lady Adelaide and Lord Trent and the way they teased and interacted but still sent each other little smiles when they thought no one was looking. He’d never seen a couple like that, certainly never seen a marriage like that, but it looked ever so much more appealing than the ones he had seen.

  And he could not even begin to imagine having a life like that with Lady Rebecca.

  But what would it mean if he didn’t marry Lady Rebecca? What would become of all his plans? Lady Rebecca made sense. But so did Bianca, in an emotional, gut-wrenching sort of way.

  So, which was right? How did he make the correct choice? It had always been obvious before what he should do. There’d been only one true step forward, but now, there were paths.

  He had to believe he could make the right choice. “Lord, help my unbelief,” he whispered.

  “What?” Bianca asked, turning to him and pulling up a blade of grass to run through her fingers.

  He shook his head and looked back up at the sky. Lord, help my unbelief. Not my belief in my own capabilities but my belief that you’ve got a plan for me and I should follow it, even if it doesn’t make sense.

  “Lady Adelaide and Miss Hancock seemed like great friends.” Bianca’s statement broke the silence and Hudson’s impromptu prayer.

  “I think so.”

  “I don’t have many friends. Aaron. You. It has occurred to me lately that it’s something I’m not very good at. People are friendly if they see me, but no one goes out of their way to make it happen.”

  What could Hudson say to that? The truth was, if Aaron hadn’t forced him to go into town, he’d have never met anyone, except Lord Trent, who’d pushed his own way in.

  “Don’t feel bad for me, though,” she said, giving him a crooked, sad smile. “I don’t put in a great deal of effort either. It didn’t matter until I realized it. Now I can’t seem to see much else other than how lonely I am.”

  She pulled up another tuft of grass. When she spoke again, her voice was tight, perhaps even on the verge of tears. “Do you think marriage will change anything?”

  “I think that depends on whom you marry.”

  What if he did that? What if he looked at marriage as a companionship, an exchange of selves, like Aaron had described? Whom would he choose?

  A woman who liked horses and riding. He lived and breathed the animals, so if she was going to spend life with him, she needed to as well.

  A woman comfortable with joking and teasing. If she were someone he was going to give to on a personal level, he would have to respect her, and he could never fully respect someone who never challenged him.

  A woman who could help him professionally by moving in the right social circles. Companionship mattered, but he still had a life to build.

  She would be beautiful and feel right in his arms.

  She would be someone very much like Bianca.

  Whom was he trying to fool? It would be Bianca.

  A puff of air released from her lips and slid across his own. How had she gotten so close? Had she moved, or had he? Likely him, as her arms were still wrapped around her legs.

  Hudson lifted one hand to cup her cheek, thumb running gently over the soft skin. So many thoughts went through his mind he couldn’t begin to articulate them.

  Some of the things he’d been up most of the night contemplating were suddenly clear, and other things didn’t seem to matter anymore. The idea that she would find someone, that the other men in Newmarket would suddenly see what they’d been missing, squeezed his chest until he couldn’t breathe.

  What would happen when he didn’t see her every day? When she wasn’t waiting in his stables?

  “Hudson,” she whispered, her face so close to his that his own name caressed his lips.

  He leaned closer, wanting more of her breath mingled with his.

  “This is a bad idea,” she said, each word making her lips brush against his own.

  Was it? Everything he thought he knew was suddenly in question. “I want to kiss you.”

  Her throat shifted against his fingers as she swallowed. “I want to kiss you too.”

  Then they both leaned in to remove that last bit of distanc
e, and their lips met, bonding together just as their words had moments before.

  What Hudson had thought was a moment of sheer perfection five minutes ago was nothing compared to what he was experiencing now.

  This was bliss.

  This was joy.

  He shifted his balance to free his other arm and wrapped it around her as he tilted his head to deepen the kiss. She leaned farther into him, accepting his embrace and offering her own, though the twist of her body from the way she’d been sitting kept him from being able to pull her fully into him.

  It was that inability to bring her closer that prompted him to pull back from her sweet kiss and search her face.

  Her eyes fluttered open slowly, a dazed expression in her brown eyes that made him want to kiss her again.

  With one more blink of her eyes, his future went from planned to uncertain, but it also went from dull to colorful. He’d been complaining about the food all while being willing to settle for a bland life.

  No more. His path might be uncertain, there might be questions, but he’d rather walk it with Bianca than anyone else.

  He needed to do it right, though. He needed to end his attentions to Lady Rebecca, needed to ask Bianca’s father, needed to . . .

  Needed to calm Bianca down, because the dazed expression had left her face and been replaced by something that could only be described as terror.

  Thirty-Three

  He’d kissed her.

  Bianca blinked her eyes open to see Hudson staring back at her, so close she could see the darker rim of navy around his blue eyes.

  He had kissed her. Really kissed her.

  His arm was still around her, and she pushed it away, but since it had been the only thing holding her up, she fell backward onto the grass.

  She scrambled to her feet, tripped again because she was standing on the long drape of her riding skirt, then made another attempt to rise after kicking the fabric away.

  By the time she was firm on her feet, her heart was thudding in her chest, her breathing was faster than a galloping horse, and a blade of grass had gotten stuck in her hair and was dangling in front of her face.

  She snagged the grass and threw it aside before glaring at Hudson. He still sat on the ground, one hand outstretched, as if he had attempted to catch her when she tripped.