No, it was not safe. It was so wonderful to be alone with him, so painful when they parted or something reminded her that he could never be hers. And it was increasingly difficult to keep her feelings from showing. She kept catching herself looking at him, then did not know whether to look away rapidly which might look self-conscious or risk being seen staring.
He was getting to know her too well, that was the trouble. It was the only explanation for the oddly tender look in his eyes sometimes and the almost possessive way he protected her. Giles was obviously a man who was fiercely protective of ‘his’ people, whether they were his family, his men or, in her case, a stray young woman he had offered to help. It must be one of the characteristics that made him such a good officer: his men would sense his concern and interest, even if he never allowed it to show in the way he did with Hebe, or his father, or herself. How was she going to cope with this ache inside once he was no longer with her?
‘A penny for your thoughts,’ he said suddenly, startling her into unwary speech.
‘I was just wondering how on earth you are going to fill your time now you can stop rescuing me.’
Giles grinned. ‘I do not anticipate being bored. Quite the contrary. I have…plans.’ There was a note in his voice of mischief, and something else that Joanna did not recognise, but which caught Alex’s brooding attention.
‘Indeed? And what is her name?’
Before Giles could reply Hebe said, ‘Alex!’ sharply and Starling came in with a silver salver.
‘The post, my lady.’
‘Give it to his lordship, please, Starling. My goodness, what a pile of letters. All our acquaintance no doubt telling us how much happier we would be in Brighton or Bath, I expect. I hope they have some interesting gossip. Oh, how I wish I could go sea bathing right this minute.’
‘Really?’ Joanna was startled.
‘Yes, truly. I do not understand it. I feel so restless, as though I could walk for miles.’
‘You’ll do no such thing my darling, but if you are good and rest I will take you to Brighton the moment the doctor says you may go. Here you are, three letters for you, that should keep you occupied.’ Alex passed them across and tossed one letter to Giles. ‘One for you, Joanna.’
Joanna slit the seal on her missive, which by the handwriting was from her sister Grace. No doubt she was now fully informed by their mama of her younger sister’s shocking behaviour, dangerous adventures and also Mama’s hopes of a proposal from Lord Clifton despite all this.
She skimmed the letter but it was exactly as she feared—shock, surprise, gentle chiding and a strong hint that good fortune was going to smile upon her despite it all. Joanna folded it crisply and set it down beside her plate. She was in no mood for lectures or sermons, however softly delivered.
Giles had unfolded the wrapper on his letter to reveal what appeared to be at least three sheets of expensive paper covered in a swirling hand. A cloud of attar of roses’ scent wafted across the table, making Hebe cough.
He was reading with some difficulty but with an all-too-familiar expression on his face of loving amusement.
‘A letter from Lady Suzanne, I collect,’ Joanna enquired, attempting to keep the sharp note out of her voice.
‘Yes. I have not written for an age, so she says, and she is taking the opportunity to chide me for that and to remind me, with very little subtlety, that it is her birthday in ten days. I suspect that all this hinting is because she knows I am buying horses and she would like a showy hack to ride in town.’
‘How old will she be?’ Hebe asked.
‘Twenty.’
‘And no offers yet? I am surprised. Surely she is an exceptionally eligible young lady.’
‘Exceptionally,’ Giles agreed. He hesitated, then added, ‘It is not yet spoken of, so I am sure you will not say anything, but there will be an announcement very soon.’
‘A lucky man,’ Hebe said.
No one except possibly Alex noted the sharp tone of Hebe’s comment. Joanna stopped breathing, her every nerve seemed to be alive and shuddering with pain. She was unaware that she had gone white, was unaware that she had put her cup of tea down so sharply that it slopped into the saucer. All she was aware of was the loving expression in Giles’s grey eyes as he looked at the letter in his hand.
Suddenly she found she could move. In fact, it was almost more than she could do to control her instinct to spring to her feet and run. She stood up abruptly, causing both men to rise rapidly also. ‘Please, don’t.’ She gestured for them to sit. ‘I think I will go for my ride now.’ She was at the door before Starling could collect himself to open it and there was an awkward shuffle as they both reached for the handle, then she was out and the door closed behind her.
In the long silence that followed Hebe watched Giles with such concentration that his eyes dropped from hers. He sat looking at the fallen sheets of paper in front of him, then got to his feet. ‘Excuse me, Hebe.’
Left alone in the dining room with only the discreet figure of Starling moving chafing-dishes on the sideboard, Alex said with an air of sudden discovery, ‘Hebe, are Giles and Joanna…?’
‘Yes,’ she said tightly. ‘The trouble is, I don’t think they both know it yet.’ She broke off, an arrested expression on her face. ‘Oh! Oh, Alex, I do believe the baby has started.’
At which point the question of his friends’ relationships suddenly ceased to interest Lord Tasborough in the slightest.
Joanna arrived somewhat precipitously in the stableyard to find Hickling in earnest discussion with an undergroom who was just tightening the girths on Moonstone’s saddle. She set her hat rather more firmly on her head and pushed in the pins.
‘Miss Joanna, Robbins says you sent to have the grey saddled this morning.’
‘Yes, Hickling. Is there a problem? She isn’t lame, is she?’
‘No, miss, nothing like that. It s just that the Colonel ordered her rested and to have extra oats because of the long journey when you arrived here.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, miss, now she’s as fresh as paint and ready to jump out of her skin, I don’t know as how you really ought to be riding her, miss. Perhaps I ought to send one of the lads out on her today, shake some of the mischief out.’
‘Nonsense, I can manage her,’ Joanna said, walking firmly up to the mare and pulling on her gloves. ‘I am only going to ride in the paddock.’
She gathered up the reins and stood waiting for Hickling to give her a leg up. ‘Thank you.’
Giles arrived in the yard just as she was hooking her right knee over the pommel and flicking her skirts into order. Apparently he had come straight from the breakfast table for he was hatless and appeared to have been running. Joanna pulled down her veil and made a business out of gathering her reins.
‘Hickling, is that mare fit to be ridden?’
‘Fit? Yes, Colonel. I was just saying to Miss Joanna, she’s jumping out of her skin after all that rest and oats.’
‘Jo…Miss Fulgrave, I think you had better dismount. Perhaps we can find another horse for you this morning.’
‘You think I am an incompetent rider?’
‘You know I do not, but Moonstone…’
‘But Moonstone is about to become a birthday—or is it a bride-gift—is she not? Surely you would not deny me one last ride on her, Colonel?’
‘I am not giving Moonstone to Suzanne, if that is what you mean.’
‘No? Then you will have no objection to me riding her, will you?’
‘Joanna…’
But as she spoke Joanna dug her heel into Moonstone’s side. The mare needed no encouragement. From a standing start she was cantering as they reached the stableyard arch. Joanna took her under it in a sweeping turn towards the front drive and disappeared.
‘She said she was going to ride in the paddock, Colonel,’ Hickling said, ‘I’d never have got her mounted if I’d known.’
‘She was going to, until I interfered,’ Gile
s responded grimly. ‘What have you got in the stables? I don’t want to waste time having something fetched up from the paddocks.’
‘Just Black Cat, sir. I’ll get him saddled up.’
Hickling ran for the box and dragged back the bolts. Giles joined him inside, pulling the saddle off its tree as Hickling reached down the bridle. An intelligent Roman-nosed head swung round to regard them with mild interest.
‘Damn it, he’s big!’
‘Up to your weight, Colonel. He’ll go all day, agile as the cat he’s called for over wall and ditch, but he’s got no great turn of speed. Long stride, though. Coom up, Cat!’
Thus encouraged, the big horse allowed himself to be led out into the yard where he stood placidly while Giles swung himself up into the saddle. He broke into a steady canter as they left the yard, but to Giles’s grim amusement his ear flicked back as though in amazement as he was asked to gallop. ‘Come on, Cat,’ he encouraged him. ‘We’ve got a little grey mouse for you to catch.’
Luckily the fine weather had given way to showers during the night and had softened the ground just enough for the marks of Moonstone’s passing to be visible. Giles checked as three long rides split off from the carriage drive. Each headed deep into the dense beech woods, but only one showed the cut turf left by elegant sharp hooves. Cat wheeled neatly and followed Giles’s guiding hand down the left-hand ride, the one which followed the very scarp edge of the Chilterns before they plunged down into the Vale below.
As she rode Joanna caught glimpses through the trees of the fields and hedges, the curls of smoke over the villages, but her attention was far too concentrated on Moonstone to admire the view. The mare was proving just as much a handful as Hickling had warned and Joanna was aware that she was riding at the very limit of her skill and strength.
Not that there was any spite in the mare, but she had been bored standing in a strange paddock and the sensation of a familiar rider and wide open rides stretching before her was too much to resist. Joanna sensed that if she was allowed her head she would calm down of her own accord after a mile or two and there was no point in indulging in a fight.
The concentration needed to keep balanced and maintain at least the illusion of control helped blot out the memory of Giles’s face as he read Lady Suzanne’s letter, but try as she might Joanna could not stop the words announcement…very soon repeating themselves over and over again to the rhythm of the hoofbeats.
Then Moonstone burst out of the ride into a small clearing where four ways met and straight into a herd of fallow deer that had been grazing on the clipped turf. The hinds bounded away but the stag, his spread of antlers broad and menacing, stood his ground, head lowered.
Moonstone stopped so abruptly that Joanna almost went over her head. Somehow she scrambled back into the saddle, groped for the reins and thrust her foot back into the wildly swinging stirrup. The mare tossed her head, allowing Joanna to grab a handful of mane and rein, then took off down a ride at a flat-out gallop.
Joanna had never ridden so fast. Hauling on the reins did nothing to stop the panicked animal and only threatened to unseat her. At this speed a fall could be fatal. She gave up and clung to mane and pommel and prepared to hold on until Moonstone calmed down.
Behind her Giles was making ground, for although Black Cat had no great turn of speed his stride was immense and his steady canter ate up the distance. Then they reached the clearing and Giles reined in hard at the sight of the welter of hoofprints dug deep into the ground. For a moment he circled, his face set, then leaning over he tore a hazel switch from a bush and applied it to the black horse’s flank. ‘Come on, Cat, gallop!’
With an indignant snort the big animal gathered his hindquarters under him and took off. Giles’s mouth twitched in a humourless smile. Now he had her.
The chase took longer than he imagined. By the time he caught a glimpse of dappled grey hindquarters ahead of him, the Cat’s neck was flecked with foam. Joanna and her mount had reached a point where the ride curved in to skirt the edge of a deep dell. At some time long ago the farmers far below had hauled chalk from it for their heavy clay soils, now it was simply a deep depression lined with years of fallen beech leaves, crisp and tan in the sunshine.
Joanna had regained the reins as Moonstone slowed and had begun to pull on them, talking to the mare as she did so, ‘Come on, girl, steady, steady now, that’s enough.’ Moonstone slowed, halted, then, hearing the hoofbeats behind her, put back her ears and reared. They were on the edge of the dell. Under her hooves the chalky soil crumbled. The mare slipped, recovered, twisted and Joanna went over her shoulder, tumbling head over heels through the thick leaf mould to the bottom as Moonstone bolted into the depths of the wood.
Black Cat was coming on so fast that he reached the point where Moonstone had reared before Giles could pull him up. Despite his legendary nimbleness the big horse stumbled, pecked and stopped with a suddenness that jolted Giles in the saddle.
Joanna looked up from where she lay flat on her back in a deep mattress of leaves and saw the plunging animal and then Giles swinging down from its back. ‘I am all right!’ she called. ‘Just give me a moment to get my breath, there’s no need…’
But Giles was already over the side of the dell and half-sliding, half-jumping down towards her. He reached a shelf in the slope where grass grew thick and checked the slope for a moment, then stepped forward again.
The sound—a crack, then a thud—was so strange that it made no sense to Joanna. Then with a gasp that she realised with horror was a choked-off cry, Giles fell sideways on to the ledge, clutching at his leg.
She got to her feet, scrambling frantically up the slope, clawing at roots and scrubby branches until she reached the ledge. ‘Giles?’
He was lying awkwardly and for a long moment Joanna could not understand what was wrong. Then she saw the cruel iron jaws clamped around his right calf and realised that he had stepped on a mantrap.
‘Giles!’ She fell on her knees beside him, ineffectually trying to find a point where she could grip the trap to pull it apart, but it bit tight into the leather of his boot cutting deep into the flesh beneath and the gap either side of his leg was too close to the hinges for her to be able to exert any leverage.
Joanna stopped her frantic, futile efforts. Her gloves were torn and stained red with blood and rust. She wrenched her gaze from them and forced herself to look at Giles. He was white, his mouth a tight line and his eyes dark. How he was conscious Joanna had no idea: the sight of his leg was enough to make her feel sick and dizzy; she could not begin to imagine the pain.
‘I will go for help,’ she said as steadily as she could manage with tears trickling down the inside of her nose. I will not cry, I will not! ‘Moonstone has bolted, but your horse is still here.’
Giles focussed his eyes on her with an effort. The first stunning blow as the jagged teeth closed around his leg had been replaced by a burning agony that seemed to fill his consciousness. He could not tell whether any bones were broken, all he was aware of was a sensation as though something was gnawing the flesh from them.
The image of Joanna blurred and then cleared. She was sheet white, her eyes filled with tears, but there was a fierce determination about her from the set of her jaw to her clenched, stained fists.
‘Black Cat,’ he managed to say. ‘He’s steady, he’ll know his way home.’ He saw her look at his leg and wondered with a strange sense of detachment if he was going to lose it. ‘Is it bleeding much?’
‘Oozing,’ Joanna replied, bending over to look closely. Her hat had come off in her fall and her hair was loose. He half-lifted a hand to touch it, then let it fall back again. ‘I think the trap is so tight around it that it is stopping much blood.’
And stopping much blood going to his lower leg and foot, Giles realised grimly. ‘Do not try and hurry,’ he said as she got to her feet. ‘Get there safely. Alex will know what is needed.’
‘I cannot believe he would be so barbarous as to al
low these things,’ she said, her voice shaking with anger.
‘Not his land,’ Giles managed to grind out. He was damned if he was going to pass out in front of her.
Joanna turned to clamber up the slope, stopped, turned back suddenly and stooped to drop a kiss on his forehead. ‘Lie still, I will be as quick as I can.’ Then she was gone. He could hear her scrambling progress, then, ‘Here boy, here, Black Cat.’ Silence. A gasp. ‘Oh…oh…hell!’
Giles twisted awkwardly in an attempt to see up the slope behind him, failed and fell back sweating. There was the sound of someone slipping and sliding down again and Joanna reappeared in front of him, a saddle over her arm.
‘He is dead lame,’ she said furiously, falling to her knees and turning the saddle over.
Giles felt a flicker of amusement run through him. ‘Your language, Miss Fulgrave!’ he murmured.
‘Do not joke,’ she retorted. ‘I can’t…can’t…just don’t, that’s all.’ She broke off and swallowed. ‘I thought that if I could get the saddle under your thigh and knee it would support it and take some of the strain off the muscles.’
Giles watched her from between eyelids that felt dangerously close to closing. She was so shocked and frightened, yet so determined to cope that her own weaknesses were making her furious.
She got the saddle into position and began to slip it underneath, breaking off to take his thigh between both hands in an attempt to straighten the angle. He bit back a gasp of pain and saw her anguished face as she glanced at him, then she set her lips tight and carried on. The relief as the padded lining of the saddle took the strain from his leg was so immense that it almost undid his resolve to stay quiet and stay conscious.
‘I am sorry I hurt you,’ she said stiffly and he realised with a twist of his heart that tears were running unchecked down her cheeks now. ‘But I think it will help.’
‘So much courage,’ he whispered but she did not react and he realised that his voice was so quiet she had not heard him.
‘Right, now then, I will start.’ Joanna said with brisk determination. ‘It will take longer, of course, on foot, but I will go as fast as I can.’
The Society Catch (Harlequin Historical) Page 20