Who was the dead man? Another debtor who had fallen afoul of Maxwell and couldn’t pay up? Tristan shuddered, seeing a sudden vision of his own dark fate. Unless he came up with the money—or Shareb won the race—he would be the next one to be murdered and buried in a dark, Norfolk field.
He wiped icy sweat from his brow, and continued on.
The house was well behind them now, the night growing darker, deeper, blacker. Out over the lonely pastures he followed the servant and the broken-down old horse. Here the grasses were thick and damp, the brambles clawing, and he felt the moisture seeping through his shoes until his feet were wet and clammy. Somewhere off in the distance a night bird called; closer, an owl hooted. Finally, a mile away from the manor house, the servant stopped the horse, pulled the corpse from its back, and let the body drop bonelessly to the earth. It landed on its back with a heavy thud, arms outflung and face turned toward the night sky.
Tristan stole closer, unnoticed.
The servant began to dig. Cold starlight flashed against the shovel, and the sound of metal striking rock and flint, the servant’s labored breathing as he worked, and loose dirt thumping against the steadily growing pile of earth, filled the night. On and on it went. The digging sound was horrible, and the sweat turned to ice the length of Tristan’s spine as he wondered how many other unmarked graves were out here on this lonely, windswept hill.
He crept closer.
And saw the body move its hand.
He froze, the scream hanging in his throat. Then reason and reality swept in, and with it, horror. The bugger was burying the man alive!
The shovel flashed, the servant grunting and cursing as he struck rock. Holding his breath, Tristan crept forward. He was thirty feet away now . . . twenty . . . fifteen—
The old gelding stepped quietly toward the fallen man and nosed his shoulder, as though trying to rouse him. The hand moved again, then the arm, and Tristan heard the poor fellow moan, saw him drag open his eyes and reach up to gently touch the horse’s lowered muzzle.
At that moment, the servant turned and saw the whole thing.
Swearing, he tore a pistol from his pocket and trained it on the defenseless man.
But he was too late. Tristan had already leapt forward, his elbow deflecting the servant’s aim, and the shot went wild into the Norfolk night.
CHAPTER 23
The crack of a pistol, the ground vibrating beneath him as bodies wrestled in the grass, grunts, curses, fists against flesh—and the dark mass of Thunder moving to stand protectively over him. Colin, dazedly aware of the struggle, tried to sit up, couldn’t. He fell back in the grass and must have blacked out, for when he opened his eyes there was only a hand against his cheek and someone hovering over him, breathing hard.
“Ariadne—” he murmured, desperately trying to get to his feet. “Got to get her out.. . . “
The stars wheeled above his head and began to fade out. From a great distance away he felt his rescuer shaking him, slapping his wrists and cheek, forcing him back toward consciousness. An arm slid behind his nape, pulling him up. Dragging open weighted eyelids, Colin saw a youthful but handsome face, intent gray eyes staring worriedly down at him, and a tense, determined mouth that broke suddenly in a relieved smile.
“Another one of Maxwell’s debtors, are you?” the youth drawled, in a voice that was educated and high-bred.
“Colin Lord . . . veterinarian, London.”
The wry smile vanished and the youth leapt to his feet. “You’re the bloody bastard who helped Ariadne get to Norfolk! Damn you, I ought to just finish what that idiot started and kill you right here and now!”
Colin, too ill to stand, drew his legs to his chest, and rested his brow against his knees.
“Please, after I get my bearings. Make it a fair fight, at least.”
“If it weren’t for you I’d have caught up to her and stopped her before she ended up in the clutches of that—that monster, Maxwell!”
“And pray, who are you?”
“Tristan St. Aubyn, her brother,” the lad declared, with highborn indignation.
“Ah, yes, of course.” Colin bent his head and wincing, massaged the back of his skull. “Young Lord Weybourne. If you’re after the stallion, I fear you’re too late, lad.”
“I’m not too late. Shareb-er-rehh belongs to me, not my sister. Besides, I didn’t chase her all the way from London because I wanted to get my hands on that horse! That isn’t what she thinks, is it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Bloody hell.” The young lord, no less high-strung than his sister, began to pace, cheeks bright with color, fists clenched at his sides. “I chased her all the way to Burnham because she cannot marry Maxwell, she doesn’t know the danger she’s in, doesn’t know what Father tried to do, damn it, she doesn’t know anything—”
“She thinks you want the horse to pay off your debts,” Colin said, carefully.
“Debts! I’ll tell you about debts!” Then, lowering his voice as though he feared anyone hearing him out here in this desolate pasture, the young lord spat, “I’m in debt to the tune of thousands, and it’s all owed to Maxwell. Gambling debts, horse racing debts, cockfighting, dog-fighting, and boxing debts. I made wagers, lost, borrowed from Maxwell because he was the only person I could find who’d lend me the blunt to support my obsession, gambled more, lost more . . . before I knew it I was in over my bloody head.”
He paused, raked both hands over his eyes, dropped them on a sigh of self-disgust before turning his face away.
“Maxwell threatened me with bodily harm if I could not come up with the money. So I went to my father, and when he realized what a fiend Maxwell is—I mean, what kind of a man would lend money to someone my age?—he tried to break off Ariadne’s engagement to him. He sent a note to Maxwell but before anything could be made public, before he could even tell Ariadne, even, that he had broken it off, there was a f-fire—”
“Easy, lad,” Colin said gently, in a voice he might’ve once used to steady a frightened midshipman.
“There was a . . . f-fire, and my father ran into the barn to try and save Shareb-er-rehh. He was the last of the Norfolk Thoroughbreds, but Father, he—he had an attack, and I was the one who . . . who . . . f-found him. Damn it, damn it all to hell—” The youth bent his brow to his fingers, unable to mask his grief from Colin’s sympathetic eyes. “And to think that my sister believes I came here to steal Shareb-er-rehh back. . . .”
Colin pulled himself to his feet. Swaying, he leaned heavily against Thunder’s stout old shoulder until the fog cleared from his brain and the waves of nausea and dizziness passed. It was then that he saw the shovel lying in the grass, the partially dug grave, the unconscious servant nearby. He had no doubts as to what his fate was supposed to have been.
“By the way,” he said, when the hitching sobs finally stopped, “thanks for saving my life.”
“Yeah. Well, I couldn’t just let the bastard bury you alive.”
The youth walked a little distance away, misery emanating from his proud, narrow shoulders as he gazed off into the night.
“So how do you propose to settle your accounts, then?” Colin asked, gently. “If you are not yet of age to claim your inheritance, it would seem that you have to give up Shareb-er-rehh in order to pay your debts, and will still lose him after all that your sister went through to keep him.”
“Mr. Lord—” Tristan faced him, his composure intact once more, his tone far older, wearier, than his face was. “Shareb is all I have. I had no choice.”
“No choice?” Colin stepped forward, the fingers of dread already inching up his spine. “What did you do, lad?”
Tristan kicked at a tuft of grass and looked away, his mouth hard.
“You signed the stallion over to Maxwell,” Colin said.
“No.”
“You plan to sell him and give the money to Maxwell, then.”
“No.”
“Then what on earth have you done?”<
br />
Tristan looked up, his eyes defiant. “I proposed a match race between Shareb-er-rehh and Black Patrick, and made a bet with Maxwell on its outcome. If Shareb wins, then Maxwell must not only publicly declare that the wedding between himself and my sister is off, he must release me from my debts. All of them.”
“And if Shareb loses?”
Tristan’s throat moved, and he turned away. “He can’t.”
Colin stepped forward, and grasped the youth’s shoulder. “I repeat, Tristan, if he loses?”
The wind suddenly whispered through the trees, making the leaves shake ominously above their heads.
“If he loses, ownership of both Shareb-er-rehh and Gazella goes to Maxwell, and I’m as good as dead.”
# # #
If anyone noticed that young Lord Weybourne’s personal groom bore a resemblance to the intruder that had been shot and buried in one of the far pastures, no one commented on it. If anyone noticed that Daley was unreasonably skittish and unable to meet anyone’s eyes, they never guessed the reason for it. And if anyone heard the Lady Ariadne’s pitiful sobs far into the middle of the night, no one, not even the maid that Maxwell had assigned to her, made any move to comfort her.
For their master was not a man to be crossed, and those who were in his employ knew that more than just their positions were at stake if they were to rouse his ire in any way. And so the household went about its business, Lord Weybourne—who insisted on seeing his sister—was assigned a room in a guest wing, and the servant Daley kept his silence, desperately praying that Maxwell would never find out that the man he was supposed to have killed had escaped and disappeared.
It was Daley’s most fervent wish that that man would not turn up in an unexpected—and close—place. Luckily, his tasks did not include anything remotely connected to the earl’s stable of prized thoroughbreds, and so it was that he did not recognize Lord Weybourne’s bespectacled, crippled groom for the man he actually was.
The idea of the disguise—and to get Tristan placed within the manor house in order to keep a watch over his sister—had been Colin’s. It was no difficult task to exaggerate the limp that would always pain him, and spectacles, a change of clothes, and a feigned, stooping gait was enough to fool anyone who might have gotten too close a look at him during his failed attempt to rescue Ariadne. He waited just long enough to make himself comfortable in his new role—and then he sent the young Lord Weybourne to bring his sister to him.
# # #
When a haggard-looking Ariadne was escorted to the parlor, she found a slim figure leaning against the mantle, hat and gloves in one hand, brow resting tiredly in the other.
With a shock, she realized it was her brother.
Her first impulse was to flee the room. Her second was to curse him for making her life hell these past few weeks, and forcing her to become a fugitive in order to save Shareb-er-rehh. He, like Father, had spent most of his life ignoring her, and yet here he was, wanting something from her. Shareb, most likely. She stared contemptuously at his drawn face, his elegant hands, and shot him her most withering look of disgust.
“I have nothing to say to you, Tristan. Good day.”
She turned to leave.
“No, Ariadne!” Abandoning his place by the hearth, he rushed across the room, seized her elbow, and forced her into a chair. She fought him, struggling angrily, until his intent gray gaze was inches from her own.
“Unhand me this instant, Tristan, or so help me God I’ll scr—”
“Colin Lord is hiding in the stable, waiting for you,” he hissed, desperately, in her ear.
Instantly, she froze and fell silent. Her body all but sank into the depths of the chair, where she sat with bent head and hands folded demurely in her lap. She squeezed them to stop their sudden shaking. She could not speak.
“Maxwell tried to have him murdered,” Tristan whispered, just above her ear. “Luckily for your animal doctor, I happened to come along at the right time.”
“Oh my God, I must go to him—”
“He’s fine,” Tristan said tightly, restraining her. “A bit sore, but otherwise quite well. Ariadne, I . . . I did something you must know about.”
He told her about the match race.
“For God’s sake, Tristan, how could you?” she cried angrily. And then she saw his stricken eyes and knew that despite everything, and all that had happened, he was still too young to know any different, still too young to weigh the risks, and still . . .
Her brother.
Her brother, who had also, in many ways, been ignored by a benevolent but largely absent father who cared more for horses than he did his own children, and whose neglect had caused Tristan to resort to plenty of “bad behavior” of his own.
“Oh, Tristan—”
The two siblings rushed into each other’s arms, sobbing with relief, despair, and grief for all that they had so recently lost.
And all that they still had left to lose.
# # #
Tristan discreetly left her at the entrance to the stable, and picking up her skirts, Ariadne ran past the box containing Black Patrick, past the demure and elegant Gazella, past the stall where Thunder—never looking more sad and deplorable than he did in contrast to a stable containing some of the finest horses in England—quietly munched his hay, and straight toward the big box where her stallion resided.
Shareb-er-rehh—staring lustfully at Gazella—saw her coming. He pricked his ears and then, walking forward, thrust his muzzle over the partition, his forelock falling over his eyes as he whickered in welcome.
But Ariadne brushed past him and the two dogs and threw herself into the animal doctor’s arms.
“Oh, Colin . . . I’m so frightened, Tristan told me what Maxwell tried to do to you, and now he’s got this match race planned and I want nothing more than to leave here and to do so straightaway, because all I keep seeing is you lying hurt on the floor and reliving that awful moment all over again and oh, please, please tell me you’re alright? I’ve been worried sick—”
But he was grasping her by the shoulders and setting her back and away from him, looking like someone had just dealt him a stunning blow. “My God, Ariadne. . . .”
Confused, she came up short. “What?”
And then she saw the direction of his gaze. He was staring at her, speechless and awestruck. His throat worked, and almost reverently, he reached out to touch her coiffed, upswept hair and the bodice of her gown, to trail his fingers down her sleeve.
Then his gaze lifted to regard hers.
“I have never seen such exquisite beauty in all of my life,” he murmured, hoarsely.
Heat swept into her cheeks. “Surely, it’s not as if you’ve never seen a lady in a gown before.”
“No, dearest, I have never seen this lady in a gown before. I am totally undone. Overcome.”
“Oh, Colin—” she gave a pained little smile. “Are you certain you’re alright?”
“Yes, thanks to your brother. I owe him my life.”
She went back into his arms, and rested her head against his chest, feeling his arms closing about her with fierce protectiveness and holding her tight. Tears rose in her eyes and she blinked them back, thinking of how close she’d come to losing this man who loved her so much that he’d scaled the side of a house for her—and did it with a bad leg. “I can’t imagine what my father was thinking, pledging me to someone so evil,” she murmured, sniffling. “Tristan said he had Father fooled, that Father didn’t know how terrible Maxwell really is, and that all Maxwell ever wanted was to get his hands on the Norfolk Thoroughbreds and I was the only way he could get to them.” She reached up and laid her hand against his cheek. “Are you sure you’re alright, Colin?”
“I am. And as much as I relish the sight of you, you cannot stay here, Ariadne. It is too dangerous.”
“No, I’m not leaving,” she declared, pulling back. “Besides, Tristan is standing guard just outside, and will cough if anyone comes. Oh, please don�
��t tell me you are actually sleeping out here—”
“I have to. I don’t trust Maxwell, Ariadne. Not with the race coming up. God only knows what he’ll do.”
“Do you think he might sabotage the race? Even harm Shareb?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him, my dear. You and your brother have too much riding on the outcome of this race, and I’d hate like hell to see that stallion end up in Maxwell’s hands—or worse, see anything happen to either of you.” He took her hand, enfolding it within his own. Then, poking his head out of the stall to be sure the way was clear, he hurried her out of the box, and toward the stairs that led up to the loft.
Ariadne followed eagerly, mindful of her skirts. A beam of sunlight, adrift with dust swirls, slanted through a window. Colin gained the loft first and kneeling in the hay, reached down to pull her up. Stifling a giggle, she went into his arms, clinging to his solid, comforting warmth before he picked her up and carried her through the whispery hay to a far corner. There he set her on her feet, and pulling her close, kissed her long and hard.
She melted against him, never so relieved and happy to see anyone in her life. Just being near him made all the fear and anguish of the past days go away, and she wearily gave herself up to him and his solid, comforting strength. His hands came up to cradle her cheeks, then one drifted down to graze her neck, her bodice, her stomach, as though to reassure himself that she was truly well and unharmed. She felt the fire starting within her, as it always did at his touch, and she broke the kiss to gaze at his beloved face.
To think that Maxwell had tried to have him killed . . .
Dear, gentle Colin, who had dedicated his life to saving God’s creatures from pain and illness—
Her eyes filled with hot tears, and his face suddenly went blurry behind them.
“Ah, sweetheart . . .”
His arms went around her, holding her close and cupping her head against the inside of his shoulder. Choking sobs bubbled out of her throat, were muffled against his heartbeat. Her tears soaked his shirt, dampening the warm, hay-scented skin just beneath, and she fisted her hands in the fabric beneath her cheek. How close she had come to losing him, and how much peril they were all still in.
Danelle Harmon Page 27