To Lure a Proper Lady
Page 26
“Gus?” She patted his cold cheeks.
Nothing.
She glanced at the ditch. Was it her imagination or was the water running higher than before? Still, she must find the means of lifting the child and hauling him across if she was going to get him home.
Kneeling beside him, she worked her arms beneath him and lifted. Her muscles strained with the exertion. Who would have imagined a skinny boy would weigh so much? Panting, she relaxed her grip for a moment before gathering herself for another effort.
This time she managed to stand, but almost immediately her boots slid from under her, and she landed hard on her backside, Gus on top of her.
Oh, damn and blast it all. She would have given that sentiment her full voice, but her lungs were screaming for air. She heaved in a painful breath, and the clouds before her vision cleared.
Out of nowhere, a figure loomed above her, the broad brim of his hat temporarily shielding her face from the cold patter of rain. She gasped as her gaze collided with the bluest pair of eyes she’d ever seen. They seemed to pierce her through, but perhaps that was merely the lingering pain of having the wind knocked out of her.
The man’s expression betrayed nothing as he opened his mouth to speak. “It appears to me you could use my assistance.”
—
What sort of parents allowed their offspring to run wild in the rain? The question floated through Adrian Crosby’s mind as he stared at the bedraggled pair on the ground. Mud from head to toe. And what were they about playing near an irrigation channel?
Mischief without a doubt. He ought to know because he’d been a boy such as these once upon a time, always into one scrape or another.
The miscreant whose face he could see—quite delicate for a tenant’s son despite the mud spatters—opened his mouth to reply to Adrian’s offer of help, but nothing came out beyond a croak. The wretch had had the wind knocked out of him, if Adrian didn’t miss his guess.
And that was to say nothing of the other, who still hadn’t moved. He lay inert across the first.
Hellfire.
Adrian crouched and dragged his fingers across the second lad’s pale forehead. Beneath a layer of raindrops the skin was clammy. A gentle finger to an eyelid revealed only white. Out cold.
“What happened?” Adrian asked.
The first lad inhaled. “He fell.”
Adrian gathered the younger boy in his arms and lifted. Straightening, he settled the limp body across his chest. “You fell and he fell on you?”
“No.” The lad rolled with catlike grace and stood. Something struck Adrian about the movement as not quite adding up, but he couldn’t quite place what. “I mean he took a spill from a horse. I meant to take him home.”
“Where did he get a horse?”
“Same place I did.” The lad nodded at a spot past Adrian’s shoulder.
Turning, he spied a mare waiting patiently beneath the downpour. A very fine mare, perfectly proportioned, muscular through the haunches. A jumper, that one, of sturdy stock. Far too fine for the likes of a tenant’s wayward son.
Narrowing his eyes, he contemplated the lad once again. “That’s not—”
The sight before him tripped him up. Had he thought the face fine-boned? The entire body was finely hewn and curvy. Sopping wet breeches clung to hips and a nicely rounded rump that could only belong to a female.
Bloody hell.
“Enough.” Her command cut in on his thoughts. “We need to get him to the manor and send for a doctor.”
The manor. Right. She no doubt meant Sherrington Manor. Good Lord, the duke was kindly indeed if he’d be willing to call in a doctor for one of his stable lads.
So much the better. Adrian had been headed toward a meeting with the duke when the rain had caught him. As it was, he was about to arrive for a business appointment wet to the skin. What was a little extra mud?
“By all means, show me the way. But I can’t help but note your mare is on the wrong side of the ditch.”
“And what of your horse? Surely you didn’t appear out of thin air simply to come to my rescue.”
His horse—the one he’d hired at the nearest coaching inn—awaited him at the side of the road. On the wrong side of the stone wall that separated the thoroughfare from the farmlands. And burdened with the weight of a boy, he’d be hard put to mount.
He pointed with his chin. “Over there.”
He hoisted his burden higher against his chest. The boy in his arms was sturdy enough, but his pallor lent his skin a translucent, otherworldly quality that cancelled out the sure weight of his bones and rendered him fragile. A moan drifted from the boy’s lips, but something in that plaintive sound calmed Adrian’s thumping heart. At least the child was alive and perhaps close to reviving.
Adrian padded after the strangely dressed girl already starting for the fence.
“Can you get him over the wall and onto your horse?” she flung over her shoulder. “I’ll show you the path.”
He blinked the rain out of his eyes, but his renewed vision didn’t serve him any better. The way the rain had molded her breeches to her arse was downright sinful. He shook the thought aside. Now was not the time.
Instead he stared pointedly past her at his mount, a heavy-set but serviceable enough beast—as long as one ignored its bollock-busting trot—while she clambered over the wall.
On the other side, she turned and held out her arms for the boy. Once again, the fineness of her bones struck him. How easily he could span her wrists with his thumb and forefinger. “Are you sure?” he asked. “You couldn’t lift him before.”
She glared in response, the hazel of her eyes somehow standing in contrast to the grayish brown mud speckling her face. The same mud encased her hair, plastering it to her head and shoulders, masking both its length and color. “Lifting is different from supporting. At any rate, I slipped. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s raining just a mite. Makes for treacherous footing.”
He pressed his lips together to stave off the few choice words that leapt into his throat at her cheek and handed his burden over. She braced herself against the wall while he climbed the obstacle, mounted, and nudged his horse closer. He reached down, she heaved, and somehow he ended up with a filthy bundle of boy in his lap.
He squinted at her, once more sizing up the delicacy of her build. Her lightness masked a distinctly unfeminine amount of muscle.
“What about you?” he asked. Or more to the point, what about her mare, which was still on the wrong side of the damnable ditch, not to mention the wall lining the road. She’d been right about the treacherous footing. No sense in risking a costly injury to her mare trying to leap the barrier.
She’d already swung her slender legs over the wall and jumped to the ground a little farther down the road so she could collect her mount without getting any wetter. Not that there could be a dry patch left on her.
“Follow the road.” She pointed. “You’ll come to some woods in another furlong or so. I’ll meet you there and show you a shortcut.”
Adrian forced his gaze away from the sight of her retreating form and clucked to his horse. The beast lurched into a plodding walk, but he didn’t dare chance a faster gait. The little blighter in his arms had already taken a pounding.
Up ahead, the trees encroached. She’d meet him there, she’d said. Meet him on that fine specimen of a mare and show him the path to the manor. Far too fine a mount for one dressed as roughly as she. But something didn’t fit. She spoke too finely for a stable lad’s sister or the daughter of a tenant. Her accent—that fit perfectly with her mount and finely wrought bones. Her speech only jarred with her garments and strength.
It was only then that he realized—he’d no idea what to call her.
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