Chapter Four
Maddie drew in a long breath before she stepped forward and looked up at Quint. She fought the urge to shudder as she stared into the horse’s brown eyes. Good Lord, he was big.
“You’re doing very well,” Nathan’s soothing voice came from behind her. Then, without warning, his large, ungloved hand was on the small of her back, warm and comforting, as well as utterly distracting.
Of course that sensation was nothing new. During the past week that they had been meeting, Nathan’s presence had been as overwhelming as the idea of becoming better acquainted with the intimidating animal that stood before her. It wasn’t that Nathan was cold or distant. On the contrary, he had been the perfect teacher: kind, encouraging, and utterly gentle.
Still, whenever he was within a mile of her, all she could think about was that passionate, unexpected kiss they shared a week before. And though he’d made no motion to repeat that event, sometimes she caught him looking at her with the same heated expression that had darkened his handsome face that fateful afternoon. Her body inevitably reacted accordingly, her heart rate increasing, her hands shaking, her posture slowly moving until she leaned toward him.
But he always turned away, returning to their lessons and leaving Maddie with a mixture of relief and disappointment.
Mostly the latter.
Despite the emotional distractions, she had to admit that Nathan’s lessons were paying off. When she was near Quint, she no longer felt that choking desire to run as far away as she could, though she wouldn’t say she was ready to swing up into the saddle and ride either.
Still, it was quite an accomplishment, overcoming one’s fears, even just a little bit at a time.
She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Nathan. He was just a hair’s breath away, his warm body ever present behind her, watching her with just the slightest smile turning his full lips upward. Her heart skipped at the sight of him.
If only she could overcome her strong emotions toward him next. Both the desire to touch him again, and the fear of what he would say when the truth about her identity finally came out. Guilt stabbed her, just as it constantly did when she thought of that eventuality.
“I think that is enough for today,” she murmured, stepping away from his touch. She paced across the rolling grass, clenching her hands into fists reflexively.
Nathan patted Quint’s side before he turned toward her. “I am most impressed, Maddie. Each time we meet, I see you making great strides in overcoming your apprehension. I have always admired people who chose to face what troubles them, rather than running away.”
Maddie shut her eyes briefly, ignoring the itching burn of tears that threatened to fall. “I don’t know if I should be admired,” she finally said. “After all, I am afraid of an animal who would likely do me no harm.”
Nathan touched her arm, forcing her to look at him. Forcing her to face both his ready smile and her own lies reflected in his stare.
“But that fear comes from something, does it not? A past experience. You’ve never told me what happened, Maddie.” He motioned to a blanket he had spread out beneath a tree at the edge of the field earlier. “I would like to hear about it. Perhaps it will help if I know the truth.”
Maddie barely fought the urge to snort. Oh, the truth. That was something she had been avoiding rather handily. That and anything about her true identity. She dodged and parried like a champion fencer any time Nathan asked her about her family or her past or her life in general.
Sadly, the more she spent time with him, the more she wanted to tell him the truth. And the more she avoided it, for she knew it would end the fantasy world she’d built. The world where a man like Nathan Blackstone would like her, where she could overcome her fears, be anyone she desired and have more than the lonely life to which she had resigned herself.
“Maddie?” he asked, tilting his head to examine her closer.
She forced a smile before she moved to the blanket he had indicated. Taking a seat and arranging her skirts around herself, she shrugged delicately.
“I’m afraid the truth isn’t particularly interesting.”
Nathan pursed his lips. “You are forever telling me that nothing about you is interesting,” he said, chuckling though she sensed his frustration. “And then you reveal nothing to allow me to judge that for myself. Humor me this once, Maddie. Please.”
She caught her breath at the addition of the word please. It was a dagger right to her lying heart, a reminder that this man deserved at least some of the truth. All of the truth.
But some would have to do.
“As a child, my elder brothers delighted in tormenting me.” She shook her head. “They were childish pranks for the most part. Pulling my hair, putting worms down my gown, that sort of thing.”
Nathan nodded. “As a lad, I believe I tormented a few cousins in a similar fashion.”
Maddie smiled at the image of serious Nathan as a playful youth. Then she shook her head and continued with her own story. She had to focus if she didn’t want to reveal too much.
“One day my brothers told me that our father had arranged for a surprise for me in the stable. They blindfolded me and guided me down.” Maddie shut her eyes briefly, drawing in a long breath in an attempt to remain calm as she retold this part of her story. “When they removed the blindfold, I found myself in the paddock mere inches from my father’s new purebred Arabian stallion that he was so proud of. The animal was enormous, staring down at me with flaring nostrils. I couldn’t help it. I screamed.”
Nathan stiffened and she could see from his expression that he realized what was about to transpire in her story.
“My brothers didn’t realize it, but the horse was still spooked from its long journey and the new surroundings. He reared when I cried out and began careening around the enclosure, smashing into the boards and making a noise I shall never forget.”
Nathan’s mouth was a harsh line. “Idiots. You could have been killed.”
She nodded. “To be fair to the boys, they were horrified. It wasn’t their intention to hurt me, just frighten me. My oldest brother, John leapt into the paddock right away and pushed me clear. He broke his arm in the process, so he got his own form of punishment. Richard went screaming for our father and the groundskeeper and they managed to calm the animal and tend to my brother’s injury. But the damage was done. I have been terrified of horses ever since.”
She frowned as she thought of how kind her family had been. Her brothers remained too chagrined to this very day to even speak to her about horses again. And her father told her more than once that she never had to go near any animal that frightened her. At the time, she had been relieved, but now… she wondered what would have been different if she had been forced to face her terror as she was doing with Nathan’s help. Would she have come to enjoy riding, as most girls of her station did? Would she have formed a bond of friendship with her horse as Nathan had with Quint?
What had she missed out on by being ‘protected’?
“I can see why you were so afraid,” Nathan said, his fingers brushing over hers all-too-briefly. Her foolish body reacted to that slight touch. “It must have been quite terrifying. I have heard that Arabians can be hot-blooded and-”
He came to a sudden halt in mid-sentence and Maddie reluctantly stopped watching his tanned fingertips brush over hers. She looked up to find him watching her with an odd expression.
“What is it?” she asked, still dreamy from his touch.
He frowned. “Did you say the horse was your father’s purebred Arabian?”
Maddie nodded slowly before realization dawned. Arabians, especially purebreds as she had explained, were one of the most sought after and expensive horse breeds in Britain. The kind of man who would own one was a man of means and status.
A man like a Duke.
A man like her father.
And from the confusion in Nathan’s eyes, he was fully aware of that fact. But of course he would be,
he managed a peer’s estate and he loved horses. He understood how Maddie’s world worked.
“How did your father end up with an Arabian?” he asked, his brow furrowing. “That kind of extravagance…”
Maddie pulled her hand away from his and made a move to get up, but he caught her wrist before she could escape. He stared at her.
“Why do you avoid these subjects?” he asked.
“You avoid them, too,” she blurted out. “I have never heard anything about your family, your past. You are as much a closed book as I am.”
With a frown, Nathan released her wrist and leaned back against his palms. He stared up at the cloudless sky above with a heavy sigh, the sound of a man resigned to something he had been avoiding.
“That is a fair statement, Maddie. It’s true I have been reticent in sharing much information with you. But if I am to demand more from you, I suppose I have no choice but to give you the same kind of history that I request. So you want to know of my family.”
Maddie relaxed back onto the blanket, no longer driven to run. She could see the pained expression in Nathan’s eyes and she longed to touch his cheek, to make him smile, to take that hurt away, even though it was not her place.
“Yes,” she found herself saying softly. “If you will share that with me, I would be honored to know more about you.”
“Honored,” he repeated, a humorless chuckle escaping his lips. “There is not much of that in my tale. My father was a gentleman’s son, but not a peer. My grandfather had little money, though, and high aspirations for his son. He wanted my father to have more to be more and my father danced to his desires until the day he slept in his grave.”
Madeline wanted so desperately to say something to comfort him, but she forced herself to remain quiet as he continued.
Nathan stared at the grass that peeked around the edge of the blanket. “My father became an estate manager, just as I am. But instead of settling into his duties, instead of being respectable, every moment he worked at being his employer’s lackey. He kowtowed and bowed and let himself be the brunt of every joke. If a peer said jump, my father’s immediate reply was to ask how high. He made a fool of himself every day. Every night he spiraled further into a drunken haze. I think he must have hated himself.”
Maddie nodded slowly. She could understand his father’s actions in some way. As someone who had always been within Society, but also far removed from its inner circle, she had often been tempted to play the fool for a moment’s attention. But she had resisted.
Clearly Nathan’s father hadn’t. And Nathan had been forced to watch it. Which certainly explained his rigid attention to the rules of interaction between peers and those who were not. And his dark feelings toward those with rank.
Including her when he discovered the truth.
“I am surprised you followed him into your profession,” she said softly, forcing herself to speak past the lump in her throat.
“I was lucky that a few of the men who were witness to my father’s actions recognized that I had talent or intelligence of some kind. It was suggested to his employer that I be sent to Eton with some of the other lads. For whatever reason, he agreed. And there are certainly plenty of boys there who are not part of the peerage. I thrived, though I never let myself play my father’s games.” His eyes grew dark and distant. “I kept myself at a respectable length from those who were above me. Even those who seemed to want to be my friend. It was better that way. Shortly after school was over, one of my classmates inherited the title of Viscount and I became his estate manager.”
“Yes, you and Lord Fulton are of an age, aren’t you?” Maddie murmured, thinking of the friendly, engaging Marcus Fulton. He had been kind enough to dance with her a few scant times at balls in the past, though she doubted she had ever stayed much in his mind. She couldn’t imagine Fulton treating Nathan as his poor father had been treated.
But she would wager that Fulton also made overtures to be Nathan’s friend. It was simply his nature.
“Do you know the Viscount?” Nathan asked, his gaze snapping to her face again.
Maddie blanched. Yet again, she had allowed her distraction to interfere with her reason. First, she had slipped up about her father’s expensive horse, now she had made a remark about Fulton that implied a familiarity. Her entire web of lies would unravel before sundown at this rate.
“I have-I’ve seen the man,” she said, avoiding the direct lie once more and hating herself for it.
Nathan nodded slowly, but she could see from his posture and expression that he was not fully satisfied yet. “Now I have shared a bit about my own past. So tell me about your family. What led you to taking a position as a lady’s maid if your family had enough money to afford an Arabian?”
Maddie bit her lip. “I-I-” she stammered. But there was nothing to it. The fact was that she had no more lies, no more ways to avoid the truth. The time had come to be honest with this man and suffer the consequences. At least she had experienced a few days with him that had changed her life. She could hold onto those things forever.
“Nathan-” she began, drawing a shuddering breath.
He leaned forward and suddenly his bare fingers stroked her cheek in a feather light touch. The air between them grew heavy and charged and all Maddie could do was stare into his eyes and blink foolishly.
“What are you so afraid of?” Nathan whispered.
“You,” Maddie blurted out before she thought. “Of what you’ll think of me, of what you’ll say, of what you’ll-”
Before she could continue, Nathan threaded his fingers into her hair and dropped his mouth to hers. All the words on Maddie’s lips, all the thoughts in her mind, drained in a startling lack of time. For that brief moment, Nathan’s touch was all that mattered. Feeling his lips move over hers, tasting his tongue as he gently, slowly took more fully, those were her life’s blood.
And this time, she knew it would be the very last time it happened. So she savored it. She refused to end it and she prayed Nathan felt the same.
#
Nathan recognized the moment when Maddie surrendered not just her arguments, but her body, to him. It was in the way she went weak in his arms. It was in the catch in her breath.
But mostly it was in her kiss. Suddenly her mouth was hot and sweet and ready, her breath in short pants, her tongue meeting his with less of the innocence she had exhibited the first time they kissed.
And Nathan was… lost. Washed away, yet again, on a sea of heady desire, overwhelmed by feeling. It should have been terrifying, since it represented everything he’d fought against his entire life.
Instead, it was right.
And he knew that this time nothing would stop him from doing more than merely kissing Maddie. He wanted to burn the memory of her touch deep into his skin. He wanted to make her shiver and cry out his name.
There were consequences to such a thing, of course. But he knew exactly what they were and he actually welcomed them.
Nathan shifted every part of his concentration onto Maddie’s touch. She had slipped her hands up the rough fabric of his jacket and was clenching at the fold of his lapels, pulling him closer. Her breasts flattened against his chest and he felt her heart pounding against his own.
Slowly, gently, he detangled one hand from her hair and glided it down her back, tucking her even tighter into the curve of his body. When she scooted to her knees and their hips touched, she let out a hiss of breath that caused sensation to multiply. He could feel her touch, taste her in every pore and nerve of his body. As if she had, with one passionate kiss, overtaken a piece of his soul.
One he relinquished freely.
As their mouths mated, Nathan lowered her onto the soft blanket, covering her body with his and reveling in the feel of her length beneath him. It had been a long time since he felt the pleasures of a woman’s heat against his own, and certainly he had never been with a woman who inspired such deep and passionate emotion, as well as desire.
&nb
sp; Pulling away, he stared down into Maddie’s brown eyes, dilated with desire, her lips swollen and pink from his, her cheeks flushed. God, how he wanted her. But not on a blanket in the open. Not in some hurried fashion where he couldn’t insure she felt nothing but pleasure.
“Maddie,” he said softly, beginning to pull away as he knew he should.
She grabbed his shoulders with a wild shake of her head. “No,” she pleaded. “Not yet. Just a little while longer before-”
With a deeper blush, she cut herself off and Nathan groaned. She had no idea the pressure she was putting on his ability to remain a gentleman. She wanted more and he wanted nothing else than to give her more. Take more.
He shut his eyes. “Very well, Maddie,” he whispered, lowering his lips to hers to brush a light kiss across them. “Just a taste of what I’ll give you later, when we are alone. When there isn’t anything separating us.”
Her eyes widened, but before she could speak he brushed his hand down the front of her plain gown. She shivered as he let his fingers glide over the rise of her breast and felt the pebbling effect on her nipple beneath the fabric.
“Nathan,” she moaned, part question, part plea.
“Shh,” he soothed, cupping her and feeling his erection swell. “Just let me, Maddie. I swear to you I won’t take anything from you…” He lifted his gaze to hers. “Yet. Not here.”
She hesitated for a moment and he saw a thousand thoughts rush through her mind before she nodded. “Y-Yes. I trust you.”
He dropped his mouth to hers, continuing to massage her breast as he plundered her lips. Soon, Maddie began to lift her hips to his, little breathless moans gasping out between kisses as she surrendered to the pleasure of being touched for the first time.
With that thought thrilling him, Nathan let his hand sweep lower, gliding over the curve of her stomach, across her hip, down to her thigh where he caught a handful of cotton skirt and began to ball it up. Lifting, he slipped his hand beneath and rested his palm flat on the warm silk of her stocking-clad knee.
Almost A Spinster Page 16