Lady Caroline’s reaction to the loss of her personal hunting space, on the other hand, would doubtless prove an obstacle. She could use the area for her hunting party, but come spring, he’d have to reclaim it.
Adrian pushed the ledgers across the polished surface of the desk, where they collided with the remains of his supper tray. He sat back and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
The far corners of the office lay in full shadow. The only thing keeping them at bay was the orange glow of his candle. The window presented an inky blank rectangle in the center of the wall. When he’d settled in here, the view had looked over a portion of the gardens extending back toward the stable. Now the grounds lay under the late evening’s peace.
Or did they?
He slid back his chair and moved to the window. Aye, he had spotted movement. As if his thoughts of Lady Caroline had taken life, a ghostlike form, clad in a white shirt and buff-colored breeches, stole along the path.
Good Lord, the danger. She couldn’t possibly be considering a moonlit ride, not with her preferred mount acting up.
But no, that couldn’t be Caroline. The figure was too small and its manner of walking…Well, it was frankly off. No female in his experience clomped in such a fashion. Which could only mean…
“Gus, what are you doing out of bed already?”
It must be the boy. Adrian had yet to meet him officially, but he well recalled the size and weight of the body in his arms. He also knew enough about eleven-year-olds—having been one himself—and the sorts of scrapes they got into to suspect this particular escapade couldn’t be sanctioned.
He blew out the candle and made for the back entrance to the manor. By the time he reached the garden path, Gus was no longer in evidence. Damn.
Adrian lengthened his stride and soon found himself facing the door to the stables. Ajar. Double damn. At least, he could hope to catch the boy before he did anything foolish, such as take out another horse.
The interior smelled of clean hay and manure in equal parts. The occasional rustle of straw and the steady chomp of equine teeth on grain broke the night’s silence.
“Gus?” Adrian called in a low voice, so as not to disturb any stable boy sleeping in the haymow. “Come out of hiding now.”
No answer beyond a few curious glances from the stables’ occupants.
Adrian moved farther along the row of stalls. Where could the boy be hiding? In the loft? But then he would have roused the grooms. An empty box?
Such a box stood directly in front of him. A particularly large stall, one he recalled from earlier in the day when he’d taken a horse to ride out to the drainage ditch.
Damn, damn, and damn.
That stall had housed Boudicca, and now she was gone.
Chapter 8
“Cousin, have you got a moment?”
Supper was over, and Caro hadn’t made her escape fast enough, hang it all. Snowley had spent the entire meal trying to engage her in conversation. From across the dining room table, his efforts had been easy to avoid, but now he’d cornered her. “What is it?”
“I require your assistance in a certain matter.”
Oh, good Lord. “Is this about Pippa?”
Snowley smoothed his palms down the front of his striped waistcoat and cleared his throat. “As a point of fact—”
Caro cut him off before he could launch into a long-winded explanation. “If you no longer wish to pose for her, there’s a very simple solution. You could always go home.”
Under normal circumstances, Snowley maintained his own residence half a day’s ride away from the manor, but he’d made himself a more or less permanent guest ever since the disastrous house party in June. The one where he’d fully expected Lizzie to accept his proposal. Instead she’d married the Bow Street Runner she’d hired to investigate the possibility the duke was being poisoned. The culprit turned out to be none other than their former estate agent. Once he was caught, the duke recovered, and Snowley found himself without a bride.
“I can’t do that yet,” Snowley protested. “I owe it to the estate to ensure Mr. Crosby is settled in properly.”
Caro let her mind drift back to this afternoon, and the ripple of work-hardened muscles beneath firm flesh. Utter decadence, that mental image, and she’d carry it with her until she was as old as Great-aunt Matilda. “Mr. Crosby seems to have matters well in hand.”
“So did our former estate agent. He got along so swimmingly that no one noticed he was robbing us all blind.”
“Would you be able to tell if Mr. Crosby decided to do the same?”
Snowley shifted his weight from one foot to the other, while the tips of his ears turned red. “Well, he may wish to consult with me on the spring planting or some such.”
Caro pressed her lips together to hold back a spurt of involuntary laughter. If Mr. Crosby required Snowley’s advice, the entire estate was buggered.
But she couldn’t tell her cousin that. Since the debacle with Barrows, Snowley, as heir to the dukedom, was trying to take greater interest in a property for which he’d one day be responsible.
“Yes, well,” Snowley went on, “about Pippa.”
“If Pippa is forcing you to assume all sorts of ridiculous poses, you might consider she’s taking revenge.”
A furrow formed between Snowley’s brows. “Revenge?”
“Naturally. For all the times you hid spiders in her paint box or slipped worms into her tea cake.”
He drew himself up. “I never slipped worms into her tea cake.”
“Oh, was that just mine?” The one time he’d tried it with her, Caro had retaliated by tricking him into mounting a fractious horse. Snowley had ended up in the manure pile.
He didn’t even have the grace to flush. “That was fifteen years ago. Surely any of you would have forgiven…At any rate, that is not the point.”
“Then what is—”
“Oh, my lady. My lord.” Caro whirled to find a maid rushing up the corridor, the same girl who, earlier, had cleaned up the remains of Gus’s broth. Her chest heaved with the effort of running, and her hair hung askew beneath her mobcap. “Oh, it’s just that terrible.”
“What is, Jane?” Caro asked.
The maid looked about, but the rest of the passage was deserted. After supper, Lizzie and Dysart had repaired to parts unknown. “It’s the boy, my lady.”
The declaration struck Caro like a blow. “Do you mean Gus? What has happened? Shouldn’t you inform his father?”
“Heaven help me.” Jane waved a hand in front of her reddened face. “He’ll have my hide, he will.”
Caro took a deep breath in hopes the maid would follow suit—for all the good it did. Caro’s own heart had taken to pounding. “Why? What has happened?”
“I only stepped out for a moment.” The girl picked up her apron and gave the hapless cotton a good twist. “A call of nature, you understand. When I came back, the window was open. He’d slipped right out.”
Caro placed a hand on the maid’s shoulder. “It will be all right. We’ll search.” She turned to Snowley. “We all will. Alert Dysart and Lizzie. I’m sure he’ll have a plan.”
“Right away.”
Caro set off down the corridor, toward the back of the house. Thank heavens she hadn’t bothered to dress for a formal dinner, or she might soon find herself ruining a silk gown.
“Where are you going?” Snowley called after her.
“To look in the stables.” Then she picked up her skirts and ran.
A light glowed yellow in the stable yard. Caro spotted it the moment she burst out the back door. She redoubled her pace.
The beaten ground before the barn teemed with activity. Grooms flitted back and forth, leading horses, clearly about to comb the grounds. As Caro approached, Mr. Crosby hauled himself on top of a horse and took a lantern from the stable boy holding his mount steady.
“Wait!” Caro called. “Have you seen Gus? He’s gone missing.”
Mr.
Crosby swiveled his head. In the flickering lantern light, his jaw tightened. “We were about to go after him.”
“After him?” Hang it, her hunch had proved correct. The boy had taken a horse out. In the dark.
“There’s no easy way to say this. Boudicca is gone.”
“Gone?” His words struck her like a physical blow. Perhaps this was how it felt when a knife blade plunged into one’s back. She could barely fathom it. Gus had taken Boudicca, and the mare was hardly in a state to obey an inexperienced rider.
Good Lord, she might as well have issued that particular challenge herself.
“I’m coming with you.” She grabbed the sleeve of the nearest stable boy. “Saddle me a horse. Quickly.”
Another boy approached and proffered a set of reins. “Take mine.”
“Thank you, Gem.” Caro led the placid beast over to the mounting block. The chestnut stood a hand taller than Boudicca, but he shouldn’t give her any trouble.
“How were you expecting to ride, attired as you are?” Naturally Crosby would remark on the lack of a sidesaddle when she was dressed in a gown.
“The way I usually do.” Chafing be damned. “We’ve no time to lose.”
She favored him with a glare for good measure before scrambling aboard and arranging her skirts as best she could. As long as she could keep some muslin between the leather and the sensitive flesh of her upper thighs, she’d cope. She had to, for both Gus’s and Boudicca’s sake.
With a squeeze of her knees, she nudged her mount toward the woods. “He’s more than likely taken this path. It’s the way we usually go.”
A glance over her shoulder told her Crosby had fallen in behind her. The lantern light cast a grim glow over his features. His mouth was a firm slash across the bottom of his face. “Perhaps I ought to lead, since I have the light. I might notice any clues before you trample them.”
She reined in and let him pass, even though the estate lands were well trodden. If, by chance, they did note any hoofprints in the beaten earth, they’d have no means of telling how long ago those traces were left. “How were you expecting to find your way on unfamiliar ground?”
“Gem was going to act as my guide. At any rate, they can’t have gone far. I all but followed Gus out to the stables.”
“Then they must be nearby.”
“There’s only one thing I cannot fathom,” Crosby added after a few paces. “How did Gus contrive to get a horse out of the stables without waking anybody? All was quiet when I got there.”
“And with Boudicca not on her best behavior.” Caro tamped down an impulse to urge her mount into a gallop. Calm. They both needed to remain coolheaded. “You need me on this mission. How would you have handled Boudicca when you found her?”
“I’d have managed.”
The night lay deeper under the trees, but the glow of the lantern forced the shadows to retreat. They can’t be far. The words ran through Caro’s mind over and over, as if their very repetition might make them true. In their defiance, however, near-silence met her straining ears. She heard nothing beyond the rattle of branches and the even plod of their own horses.
Light held high, Mr. Crosby paused every now and again to survey the ground, but Caro knew well what he’d find.
“Nowt,” he muttered after several minutes. “It’s too damned dark. Would he have strayed from the path?”
Caro wiggled in the saddle. Despite their plodding walk, her skirts were beginning to shift. “We’d hear him if he had. He’d never move through the underbrush with such quiet, even at a walk.” And Lord only knew how much Gus hated maintaining a walk. No, he loved the thrill of the gallop, the same as Caro did. “More than likely he’s gone through to the other side, where he can run.”
“Gus!” Crosby bellowed. “Come out of hiding!”
“He won’t answer. He knows he’s in a heap of trouble when I catch him.”
But someone—or something—had heard them. The bushes to the left rustled with the distinct patter of footsteps hastening away.
“Over there.” Crosby spurred his mount.
“Wait!” Blasted skirts, the fabric had just slipped free. With one hand, she tried to arrange them while nudging her horse to follow.
With a snort, the beast leapt, but its next step landed as an odd jerk. The saddle seemed to fall away beneath her. A cry escaped her. After a weightless moment, the ground came up, hard, and something in her ankle seemed to pop.
—
At Lady Caroline’s shout, Adrian wheeled his mount. He lifted the lantern, half expecting to find Gus. Instead, he saw Caroline’s horse, head down and riderless.
His chest compressed. Christ almighty.
Adrian slipped from the saddle and rushed to a crumpled heap on the ground. “What—”
“You can’t tell anyone about this.”
Her peevish tone sent relief washing through him. “Are you all right?”
“My ankle may be a little worse for wear,” she admitted.
He crouched beside her and, without thinking, raised her skirts. His fingers wrapped about her lower calf, and he tried to ignore the silky texture of her stocking. No, he had no business noticing that detail, nor the lovely firmness of the muscle beneath.
Contrast. Lady Caroline embodied the word. Her lines were delicate and slender, but her constitution was the complete opposite. She was at once the refined daughter of a duke and a scrappy, hell-for-leather horsewoman. And she was none of his affair. None.
Keeping the contact impersonal, his hand descended.
She hissed in pain. “Never mind about that. How’s my horse?”
Adrian looked over. In the dim light, it was hard to discern with any certainty. “Does it appear he’s favoring his near foreleg?”
“That’s exactly how it appears.” She swatted his hand away from her ankle—he was bloody lucky that was all she did. She ought to have slapped him for taking liberties.
He eased over to the beast, his touch gentle, beginning at the shoulder and moving down toward the pastern. The horse snorted and shifted its weight. Despite the injury, Adrian kept watch for any sudden movement of sharp hooves or teeth. “Easy now,” he murmured. “We just want to make certain you’re all right.”
Caroline raised herself on her elbows. “How is he doing?” The worry was evident in her tone. If her mount had broken its leg, they’d have to destroy the animal.
“I think I feel the beginnings of heat, but I feel no break.”
She let out an audible breath, and he shared her sentiment.
“I think he’ll be all right, as long as we’re careful,” Adrian went on. “That means you’d best not ride him.” He’d have to send the animal back to the stables, which left him with a horseless Lady Caroline, who was in no condition to walk. Damn it all. “What happened?”
She let out a long sigh. “He stumbled. I’m serious, you can tell no one of this.”
“What exactly can’t I tell?”
“That I fell off at a blasted walk.” Aye, that would be a blow to her pride. The blow would only become worse when he informed her they needed to call off the search—or at least leave it to the others.
“But he stumbled, you say.” Adrian took up his light and inspected the ground nearby. Bracken and leaves turned the terrain into a strange landscape revealed under the flickering flame. “Yes, and I believe I see how it happened. He stepped in hole.”
Adrian peered closer, and swept away a pile of leaves. A rather suspect hole, if he didn’t miss his guess, for its sides were even and appeared to be delved out with a blade.
A feminine-sounding grunt pulled his attention back to Lady Caroline. She’d turned herself in his direction. “Help me up. I’d like to see.”
“Yes, I think you’d better.” He moved within her reach and gave her his hand.
Her fingers grappled with his before her grip tightened, her palm warm around his. With a sharp intake of breath, she scrambled upright, her weight balanced on her right leg. He
slipped an arm about her waist to be certain she wouldn’t topple, and she settled into his half embrace as if she belonged there. The softness of her breast burned against his chest.
He wanted her there, he realized with a budding sense of horror. Wanted what he couldn’t and shouldn’t touch. He ought to make himself let go. Now. But he couldn’t. Not with her balance in question.
“What do you make of that?” he asked once she’d inspected the hole.
“It looks for all the world as if someone dug that on purpose,” she replied. “And then tried to cover up the evidence.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“But why?”
Poachers? No, that made no sense. Adrian knew of no forest creature one might trap in this manner. “I’ve no idea, and we’ve no time to look into it now. We need daylight.”
Not only that, he had to find a way to send her back to the manor. She was hardly in a position to help him, as long as she couldn’t walk and with her horse out of commission. Not that she’d acquiesce like a properly biddable young miss. In only a few days’ acquaintance, he’d learned enough about Lady Caroline to predict that outcome.
Of all the bloody rotten luck.
Opening his mouth, he looked down to find her biting her lip. So instead of telling her she needed to go home, he asked, “What is it?”
“What if there are more holes like this one?”
By gum, she was right. “That’s something best determined in the morning.”
“But what if what happened to me happened to Gus?” She glanced at her injured steed. “What of Boudicca?”
He couldn’t help himself. He tightened his hold on her, his fingers digging into the flesh at her waist. And she—she leaned into him.
“I will stay out here until I find them, both Boudicca and Gus.”
She stiffened. “You will—”
He stepped back and placed his hands on her shoulders. “You mun know you cannot continue the search in your condition.”
To Tame a Wild Lady Page 7