If he married and miraculously got to enjoy some conjugal rights, he would have to order the poor woman swiftly out of the bedchamber as soon as he had done the deed in case he nodded off. Something he had happily done back in the old days after a vigorous bit of bed play. Since his return, the only thing his bed was good for was hiding an astonishing variety of weapons under the mattress. Weapons he had no real cause to use, but which were necessary to put his whirring mind at ease. Just in case. Good grief, he was pathetic!
All in all, the chances of him finding a woman who was prepared to contend with all that, who was also happy to take on a man who no longer had a career or a means to earn his own living, or the ability to turn his hand to something new, were practically non-existent. Because what professions were there for a hardened, embittered former soldier, highly trained in the art of cloak-and-dagger reconnaissance and that one, memorable silent assassination? The Vicar’s Daughter and the Silent Assassin—now, there was a title for a book. Unfortunately, and quite rightly, the sorry pages within it would send the whimsical Miss Freckles screaming for the hills.
He spied her in the distance, waiting by the river, and began to slow Satan’s furious pace. She spotted them and waved. Even from this distance she looked lovely. Her bonnet had already been discarded, he noted. The drab-coloured dress only served as a foil to her vibrant hair and delectable figure.
Jamie knew it was delectable. His hands had easily spanned the trim waist twice now, felt the womanly curve of her round bottom, traced the delicate bones of her ankle. He had seen the silky and creamy soft skin above it. He thought about that illicit glimpse of her skin constantly. What he needed to do was stop thinking about her as a woman, because as a woman she was so far out of his reach it was pointless even fantasising about it. But as a painter he could be an acquaintance, a useful acquaintance with skills she could utilise, justifying the powerful need to see her. Which was bizarre as he usually preferred to keep his own counsel and avoid people like the plague.
The preposterousness of his own thoughts made him groan aloud. Useful acquaintance indeed! What on earth was the blasted matter with him? He would do better to remember that she was a vicar’s daughter who had been raised to do good deeds for those in need. To her he was probably just another parish invalid she was charitable towards and had to help up from the ground. He needed to put a stop to all of those fanciful, frustrating and fruitless thoughts before they did damage. Lusting after the vicar’s daughter was as pointless as it was pathetic.
* * *
Cassie heard the approaching hoofbeats and steeled herself for the inevitable before turning around. The sight of him astride his magnificent horse quite took her breath away. The pair of them were well matched. Both dark and brooding. Both a tad menacing and oozing an aura of untamed, unbridled power. Both staring at her as if she were peculiar.
Which, of course, she was.
The Captain pulled his massive horse to a halt and dismounted carefully. Cassie could see the intense concentration this took etched into his brow line and wondered if he was trying to disguise the fact he was in pain. If he was, he certainly wouldn’t appreciate her commenting upon it; she had seen the flash of anger when she had offered to help him yesterday, almost as if he was embarrassed to be seen to be weak. Not that she would ever consider him to be weak. The man could lift her off the ground, for goodness sake! Something beyond impressive when there was so very much of her. His big body had absorbed the impact of her falling on top of him from a great height and he had still managed to move afterwards. She might have inadvertently killed a lesser man.
Because she was certain he was self-conscious about his limp, she turned towards Orange Blossom and stroked her mane, and worried about exactly how, and when, she was going to bring up the dreadful topic of her father’s impending sermon. Especially after all of the other chaos she had caused him in their eventfully short acquaintance.
You can’t tell him yet, her pony cautioned with her eyes, it will spoil the precious time you have with him. There will be plenty of time to spoil his day afterwards. And spoil it she would.
‘Hello.’
The deep yet soft timbre of his voice made her insides melt like butter.
‘Good afternoon, Captain Warriner.’ Two piercing bright blue eyes met hers, disarmed her, and Cassie heard her voice wobble. ‘I trust you are well?’
‘Yes. I brought these.’ All business, he thrust a small pile of paper at her. More of his pictures. Then he turned abruptly back towards his horse to retrieve his painting equipment. Clearly he did not wish to waste time engaging in the sort of inane, odd chatter which Cassie was famous for.
She glanced down at the pictures in her hands and experienced a tight knot of emotion at the beauty of the pieces. Not at all what one would think would emerge from the brush of such a serious and brooding man. The first showed her climbing up the apple tree, a clearly disapproving Orange Blossom staring at her in exasperation. The second depicted the moment she had got stuck. Miss Freckles’ arms were poking helplessly from her inverted skirts, the bottom half of her body and her modesty shielded with dense leaves. But it was the third painting which was the most astonishing, partly because Cassie had seen the bulk of the painting before as it was the Captain’s unfortunate perspective of the orchard after she had sent him tumbling out of the tree and partly because it was unsettling to see close up his view of her.
In the other pictures, her face had been so small that there were no discerning features. He had made her look pretty, which was flattering, but not drawn in the same intensely personal way that she had been in this picture. Was this truly how he saw her? The falling Miss Freckles had big, brown eyes framed with very becoming, thick lashes. The detail on the irises was phenomenal. He had used several different shades of brown to replicate a real eye, yet amongst all that dark were shimmering flecks of gold. Her O-shaped, startled lips were pink and plump, a lesser, subtler pink emphasised the apples of her cheeks while the dusting of freckles across her nose, hopefully much darker than her actual freckles, gave the face a special charm. The hair was quite splendid. Thick, wavy and a clever mixture of yellow, copper and red tones. Curls and leaves framed her face. The finished woman was quite beautiful. So beautiful Cassie could not take her eyes off her.
‘This is wonderful.’ Her focus slowly shifted to him and once again he was frowning.
‘Hmm.’ He stalked towards the softest patch of grass overlooking the river and set up his easel. ‘We should make a start on the next instalment to maximise the afternoon.’ Cassie watched him limp back towards his horse. ‘I shall find somewhere sturdy to tie up Satan first.’
‘Poor Satan. Why don’t you leave him be and let him wander where he chooses while we work? It seems such a shame to tie him up on such a lovely day.’
‘I don’t trust him with your pony.’
‘If I remember rightly, Orange Blossom and he got on famously last time they were together.’ To prove her point, the pony was already ambling towards the stallion. Satan appeared to be quite pleased with this state of affairs and walked towards her while the Captain looked on, frowning. The two horses sniffed each other, then began to chew on the grass simultaneously. Something which appeared to surprise him.
‘Well, I suppose we can keep an eye on them.’ He did not seem convinced.
‘I wrote the next segment last night if you would like to hear it?’
He nodded and lowered himself carefully to sit down on the riverbank. ‘It would help to give me ideas for the subsequent illustrations. I believe you left off where Captain Galahad had just begun to climb the tree.’
‘I thought it would be amusing to have the two horses introduce each other next and perhaps make this a tale about the start of the friendship between them. The moral being sometimes good things can come out of a dire situation.’
‘And there must always
be a moral to a fairy tale,’ he said dispassionately and Cassie realised he was poking fun at her.
Smiling, she opened her journal. ‘I am a vicar’s daughter Captain Warriner. There must always be a moral.’ She quickly located the place and began to read aloud. ‘“My name is Orange Blossom—how do you do?”
“I am charmed to meet you, Miss Blossom. My name is Stanley...”’
‘What?’
‘Satan is hardly a suitable name for children. It might confuse them into thinking your horse is a thoroughly bad lot, when I want him to be friendly.’
‘But Stanley? Surely there are better names. Satan is a magnificent, haughty and temperamental beast. The name Stanley hardly conveys those traits.’ Now he appeared affronted. ‘What sort of a name is that?’
‘It does have many of the same letters as Satan for a start. And to me it does convey temperamental. My father’s shortest tenure as a parish priest was in Stanley near Durham. The temperamental parishioners had him removed in three weeks.’ Although, in their defence, her father had insulted the beloved patroness of the parish because she had a penchant for a dash of red trim on her gowns. Cassie had been sinfully envious of those gowns and the daring splash of colour. One day, when she was free, she was going to dress in all of the colours of the rainbow which were currently forbidden by her overbearing father. Naming a horse after that town felt like a tiny act of defiance against him. Another small insignificant rebellion he would never know about, like the ostentatious and highly decadent garters she had bought from some travelling gypsies just before she left Norwich and the three pairs of clocked silk stockings she had found cheap in a market in London almost a year ago. Vain fripperies which probably made her the worst daughter in the world bought with some of her precious savings. Yet Cassie could not find the will to regret either purchase. Those hidden fripperies made her feel pretty and went some way to making her miserable life just a little bit more bearable while she waited for the opportune moment to make her dash for freedom.
* * *
Jamie let her have the name as it seemed to please her and he was prepared to concede Satan was not really the sort of name to grace the pages of a child’s picture book. For an hour he listened contentedly while she read the latest part of the story while he drew a caricature of himself, halfway up a tree being pelted with apples. When her voice trailed off and she lapsed into silence he risked a sideways peek at her and was surprised to see her looking troubled.
‘What’s wrong?’ Because he got the distinct impression something was. She inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders before facing him and in that moment he was sure she was going to say they could no longer continue to meet like this. He supposed she had already been more than charitable towards him. The severing of their odd little acquaintance was always inevitable.
‘I am not sure quite how to tell you.’
‘I am a big boy, Miss Reeves. Whatever it is, just say it and be done with it.’ He would shrug as if it was of no matter to him, when it was. Her rejection, regardless how inevitable, would still hurt.
‘My father has made your family the subject of this Sunday’s sermon. I’m so sorry.’
Jamie let out the breath he had not realised he was holding. Relief made him smile. ‘Is that all? Why, I am sure the congregation will adore it. They love nothing more than to malign us Warriners.’
‘You don’t understand, Captain Warriner. I have heard parts of it and he makes foul accusations.’
‘Let me guess—we are all liars, cheats and fornicators? Believe me, worse has been levied at us in the past. I am plagued with troublesome ancestors.’
She buried her face in her hands and shook her head. ‘I think his sermon goes much further. He is claiming your sister-in-law was kidnapped for her fortune.’
‘She was.’ Her head shot up and her lush mouth hung slack and Jamie chuckled. He had heard this tall tale repeatedly embellished in the last few months. Why bother with the facts of the event when the fiction offered better scandal? ‘My brother found her bound and gagged in the woods. He hid her from her abductors until it was safe for her to return to London and claim her inheritance. During that month they fell hopelessly in love. If you want to know the honest truth, they were each both nearly killed trying to rescue the other one. It was sickeningly romantic, if you are inclined towards that sort of thing.’ Which he was. Deep down where nobody else could see it.
Unfortunately, the truth made her appear more wretched. ‘I don’t know how to stop him. He doesn’t listen to me. Aside from the lies he is perpetrating about your brother, he also has written awful things about your father and grandfather.’
‘Which will all probably be true. Both men were hideous. We are quite used to being gossiped about.’
‘And he has written about you, Captain.’
‘He has. Does he paint me a rogue, too?’
‘He calls you the Earl’s henchman—someone to be feared.’
Feared? At least he was not being referred to as an invalid. ‘Capital. I quite like the idea of being considered fearsome. Perhaps it will make your father think twice before he decides to come and lecture my family again.’
‘But you will be vilified from the pulpit. Everyone will hear it and judge you.’
‘Then perhaps we should all attend church on Sunday. To give your father’s sermon some added gravitas. He can malign us to our faces and earn a great deal of respect from his new parishioners to boot. It might even serve to secure his tenure here for a long time. The locals will respect a man who calls out the dreaded wild Warriners. Excitement is thin on the ground here in Retford. The people hereabouts must grab their entertainments where they can. And if it is at our expense, so be it. Please do not let it trouble you.’
Jamie wanted to cup her cheek tenderly with his hand and smooth away the lines of anguish around her mouth with his thumb. Seeing her so distraught gave him a strange ache somewhere in his ribcage.
It’s all right, Freckles, don’t be sad.
The damning words threatened to blurt out of his mouth. To avoid humiliating himself by acting on the impulse, he set about cleaning his brushes to give his hands something else to do.
‘I must say you are taking this well.’
He shrugged. There was no point in getting upset about it. ‘The situation was the same long before my birth, so I accept it for what it is. My brothers, Letty and myself all know it is nonsense. I have never really cared what other people think.’ Except he suddenly cared what she thought. ‘Do you believe all of the gossip, Miss Reeves?’
Her beautiful brown eyes locked with his and held. ‘You strike me as a very decent man, Captain Warriner.’ That gaze never faltered and he found he could not tear his own eyes away. Around him, all the sounds of nature were amplified. The river water, birds, even the gentle swishing of the grass in the breeze was heightened as he lost himself in those dark depths.
Neigh!
The agitated sound of a horse came from behind and Jamie experienced a rush of irritation. Blasted Satan! Was there ever an animal more spiteful and ill tempered? To pick on that pretty little pony was beyond the pale and to do so when he was having such a splendid moment with Miss Freckles was unforgivable. Except when he turned around, Satan was not intimidating Orange Blossom. The pair of them were rubbing noses and necks quite excitedly.
A little too excitedly.
Judging from her quizzical expression, the innocent vicar’s daughter had no idea that all sorts of inappropriate shenanigans were on the cusp of taking place.
‘Satan.’ Jamie kept his voice low and intimidating while he tried to scramble off the ground before his button-nosed companion received an education. If he could get to the beast before...
Too late.
Satan reared up on his back legs, displaying his ardent intent to the world, while the dun-colo
ured minx his horse desired batted her eyelashes at him and swished her fluffy tail out of the way. In a split second, his stallion and her pony were doing what nature had engineered them to do and there really was nothing Jamie could do about it. He could hardly try to prise them apart. There was no telling how Satan would react to such an imposition. If he were in his horse’s shoes, Jamie doubted he would be very pleased to be thwarted either.
‘Oh, my!’ Miss Reeves, her eyes like saucers, watched open-mouthed as his horse had its wicked way with hers. Then she turned away abruptly and resolutely stared at the river. ‘It feels impolite to watch.’
At a loss as to what else to do, Jamie listlessly stared at the gushing water, too. ‘I am dreadfully sorry.’
‘Oh, please don’t be. Orange Blossom is a shameless flirt. She must take half of the blame for what is occurring.’
More fevered horse noises came from behind them.
‘The weather has been quite lovely so far this month, don’t you agree, Captain Warriner?’
‘Yes, it has. Quite lovely.’ Apparently they were now going to make small talk whilst listening to the passionate equine grunts behind them. Jamie sincerely hoped Miss Reeves would not have any questions about what their lusty mounts were up to.
‘I cannot remember a time when I have enjoyed the month of May more.’
A Warriner to Rescue Her Page 9