William was smiling when she flung open the window again. A cold wind came in with him, blowing back the curtains in her white face, but she didn’t feel the sting of the bitter air on her cheeks. She was frozen in indecision: there were no right choices now. She had begged for rescue, and he had come.
To her bedchamber. In the middle of the night. Even a girl who had lay with a gypsy in his caravan knew better than to let a man in her window.
“Let me in, Grainne,” he said gently, and the ragged edges of his voice gave away the emotion behind the gay smile. She stood back and gave him room to climb over the windowsill.
He landed gently on his toes, and then reached down quickly with his scarf to wipe away the leaves and wet grass from his boots. He shook the scarf outside the window and then pulled the panes together again. “I would not want to leave a mess on your carpets,” he explained practically. “There would be some question if a girl who is not allowed out of doors suddenly had a floor covered with grass.”
Grainne gazed at his tanned face, the firelight flickering over the raindrops on his cheeks and hair. “Why are you here?” she asked suddenly, keeping her voice low with great effort.
He looked flustered. “I don’t… I thought…” He looked at his hands, holding his wet hat so tightly they shook. “I was wrong to come here. I am sorry, Grainne. I put your reputation in danger.”
Coward! She was suddenly furious. Could he not even admit that he had come because he cared for her? Would he even now avow that he was leaving her to her fate, and never returning to Ireland? “My reputation is in shambles,” she replied shortly. “Perhaps that is why you thought you could say good-bye to me in my bedchamber?”
He frowned. “That is not what I meant.”
“It is!” She crossed her arms across her chest and fixed him with an icy glare. “Why else should you appear on my windowsill like a thief in the night? One last kiss for the road, eh William Archer? You may comport yourself like a gentleman, Mister Archer, but you are no better than you should be — just a horse jockey with a put-on accent, I should say!”
William’s jaw tightened and he flung down his hat. “Such vitriol from a woman who was moments ago mourning my departure! I suppose you are mourning your gypsy, and looking for any port in a storm to avoid respectability.”
Grainne was too startled by his choice of words to come back with a suitable retort. “ ‘Mourning my gypsy?’ “ she repeated. “What do you mean? If you are implying that I wish I had left with him… I do not.”
“That is not what I mean. Surely you heard he was sentenced to hang.”
She shook her head. “He was a horse-thief.” Suddenly she was overwhelmed with regret. She crossed to sit down on her bed, uncaring of the indelicacy, certain that her legs could hold her up no longer. “He was a horse-thief,” she repeated, more to herself than to William. “And I would have been a horse-thief with him.”
William crossed the room and knelt down before her. He tipped up her down-turned chin with one rough finger. She looked at him with a tear-streaked face. “You saved me,” she whispered brokenly. “You saved me once, will you not save me again?”
He kissed her.
As it had that afternoon in the tack room, the kiss assailed her senses. She leaned back as he rose up over her, dimly aware of his hands on either side of her head, buried in the feathers of her coverlet, holding his weight from her body as she lay back upon the bed, abandoned to the kiss. Hot and demanding, his lips bruised hers, the stubble on his chin rubbed at her delicate skin, and with a sigh she welcomed all the roughness, wrapping her arms around his back and pulling his chest closer to hers.
“Grainne,” he whispered harshly, breaking the kiss only long enough to press his lips to her neck, her cheeks, the sensitive skin just below her ears. “Ah, Grainne.”
He gave up on holding himself above her, and let his weight fall upon her body; she felt a surge of pleasure at the touch of him all along her length, and the hardness between his legs that was pushing at her own hot, throbbing center had her entire body tingling with excitement. She brought her face up to kiss his neck and then, with a daring instinct, snatched at his earlobe with her teeth, giggling when he gasped with surprise and pleasure.
His hands were all over her, within her nightrail and without, pressing the soft cotton against her breasts, stroking her smooth belly, wandering towards her womanhood. She felt, between the shivers and the tremors and the gasps, that she ought to stop him. But why? She was ruined, she was a captive, and she wanted him. If they were caught, she thought wildly, so much the better.
His hand slipped between her thigh, and she lurched so hard she nearly flung him off the bed. Grainne had found, if she sat a certain way riding astride, that she could experience a rather thrilling feeling between her legs. But it was nothing compared to this explosion as William pressed at her neck with his mouth and explored her secrets with his fingers. She bucked against him, and as her breathing grew closer to moans and cries he covered her mouth with his, and then she was in a whirlpool of sensation, and there were fireworks against her closed eyes, and then the world tilted, and she thought she would die with the joy of it.
***
He lay beside her and watched her come back to life.
She saw him watching her and smiled. “William,” she whispered. “What in God’s name did you do to me?”
He smiled sadly in return. “Things I should not have done,” he admitted. “You are yet a maiden, my dear girl, but you are no longer an innocent.”
She shook her head ruefully. “I thought I was not an innocent before, but it seems there is much more than kissing in this game.”
“Step by step,” he said. Then he sighed. “I am sorry,” he said slowly, “that I cannot teach you the rest of the game.”
Her face changed. “You are going to leave me yet.”
He knew she would hate him. He would leave Ireland with his own true love hating him, and there was nothing to be done. “I cannot steal you away from your father’s house like a —” He stopped himself.
“Like a gypsy,” she finished for him, voice like ice.
“Grainne —”
She turned away from him, straightening her simple dress. “Go, then, William.”
“I will speak to your father before I leave,” he burst out.
Her face, when she looked at him again, was like the sun.
CHAPTER TWENTY
They spoke like two gentlemen in the parlor, but there was a coldness in the atmosphere that had William’s heart sinking before he could even bring up the question that burned in his mind.
“I am grieved that you are going,” Mr. Spencer said. “But I can certainly understand the circumstances. I wish you well, and if you want the position here again, you need only write and ask if it is vacant. I daresay I can find some room for a horseman of your talent very easily.” He rose from his chair and walked towards the library door, to indicate that the meeting was over. William understood; the morning was young, and he had much to do in the kennels and now, with William leaving, in the stables. But his business with the master of hounds was not over yet.
“There is one thing,” William said.
Spencer turned, eyebrow raised inquiringly.
“Miss Spencer — I beg your pardon, sir, but I wonder if your idea of her future is fixed yet.”
“That is really not your concern,” Mr. Spencer said thoughtfully, “But you are the one who restored her to me, so I can see why you might make it so. Very well, I shall tell you: she will be married to Mr. Maxwell, who has a very nice income and shall keep her comfortably.”
William’s heart lurched. He wondered if she knew for certain, sequestered up there in her bedchamber. He wondered if she had known last night, when she had begged him to take her away with him.
Perhaps all that talk of regard had really just been Grainne figuring him as her best chance at escape.
But no, he couldn’t believe such a thing of
her. Grainne loved him. She had as good as said so last night. He swallowed, plunged ahead where he did not belong. There was nothing he could do — nothing! — and yet he could not stop himself. “I did not think Miss Spencer had such a regard for Mr. Maxwell,” he said carefully.
“She made her choices, William,” Mr. Spencer said gently. His expression softened, and, stepping closer, he put a hand on William’s shoulder. “My lad, I think I know what you are feeling. But it is not to be. My Grainne is run wild. Even if marrying Mr. Maxwell gives her pain, she must be married at once.”
“Wed her to me, then,” William said desperately. “At least not him.”
“Would if I could, lad. But you cannot control her. I have seen you try. Even if I overlooked your lack of birth or portion, and trusted that you could maintain this seat here for Kilreilly after I am gone, I cannot see that you can rein her in as she needs must be. And I cannot risk her again. She has already proven that she has no good sense; she must be married to a man who will keep her safe.”
William looked down. His head was whirling. He knew he could not marry Grainne, that he was not free to marry Grainne while he was still affianced to Violetta, that even if he was free she was sadly below him in rank, but he knew just as certainly that he loved her, and he could not let her be lost in a loveless marriage, be broken by an unhappy life.
There was no way out.
“Say good-bye to her, lad, for good,” Mr. Spencer said gently. “It’s better to be out in the open about these things.”
***
She looked up, startled, when William was ushered into her room by Emer, and she could not keep the blood from rushing to her cheeks. Had he spoken to her father, then? Was it yea or was it nay? She thought of riding away with William, escaping the bonds she had forged for herself here with her bad behavior and foolish notions, and making a life with this handsome man who made her shiver with pleasure and shout with anger. Life would be an exciting gallop, all the time, she thought, with someone like William to keep her on her toes.
But he did not look like a man about to propose matrimony. She curled her toes inside her shoes.
“Grainne,” he began, and she knew at once that there would be no happy ending. His tone was too bleak. “Your father bids me take your leave a final time.”
“Final?” She knew she whispered, but she could not find her voice. She sank down into the chair by the fire again, hand to her throat, waiting.
“I cannot return.”
“And you will not take me.”
“I cannot —”
“You came here and you ruined everything,” she burst out, her voice choking with tears. “You took my horses from me, then when I sought escape, you caught me. I have been locked away here, waiting to be married to a man I despise, to sit at his table and listen to him blather of sheep and of sheepdogs until I shall certainly go mad. I have been torn from everything I love, and now you say you are going away, and I should rejoice that I shall never see you again. But I cannot. I cannot help but ache at the thought of not seeing you, nor of feeling your touch.”
“Grainne —” His face was twisted with grief.
“You love me.”
“Yes.”
“I love you. I have loved you so long. While you tore down my world, I fell in love with you.” She swiped at the tears running down her face, hating herself for allowing them, and him for causing them.
“We cannot.”
She swallowed, and took a deep breath. It was no good. He would not budge, for whatever reason. Perhaps he did not love her enough, despite his fine words. “No,” she agreed. “It is too late.”
“It could never be.”
She took deep, shuddering breaths, trying to compose herself. “Suppose I should throw myself from the window to avoid this marriage.”
“No — no! You would not.” She saw him start to move to her, and then stop himself. She closed her eyes against the pain of it.
“No… you are right.” She turned her face down, so that she would not be tempted to look at him. “That would be too foolish. I may have been a foolish girl, but… I know how to live. I do not know how to die.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The ship was rolling on the sea unmercifully, and William’s mind was no less unsettled.
“You must pull yourself together, man,” Peregrin said, not unkindly. “We cannot go back to London looking as though we have come away from a funeral, for in fact we are hoping that we are not coming to one.”
“I have ruined her life, Peregrin,” William muttered. “I cannot pull myself together. I am in a most desperate state.”
“Ruined her life! And how, by stopping her from running away with a gypsy and a horse-thief? You saved her life, more like.”
“She would never have done such a thing if she weren’t certain she was being pushed out of the stable-yard. She knew her father was replacing her. With me. I drove her to it.” It was not a new argument, but it rang over and over in William’s mind. He had done this to her, he had done this to her. He had ruined her life.
“Utter rubbish. Her father had already decided it was time to drag her back into the house and stuff her into a dress. If that’s why he hired you, it’s certainly not because of your coming that she fell into bad company. She would have done it had any other man filled the position.”
William looked skeptical.
“Listen, Will, I am fond of you and so I will spend more time than I think this chit could ever warrant on telling you: you will forget her. You fell in love with a passionate girl who looks good in riding breeches! Who could blame you! But you certainly couldn’t have entertained any visions of her riding down Rotten Row in those riding breeches. If you did bring her back to London with you it could only be as your mistress, and a hidden one at that, for in London society she would have to be bound into the same corsets and dances and drawing rooms that you vow she despises back in her frumpy little house, only it would be a hundred times worse for being the house of an earl!”
Peregrin felt so put out by this speech that he had to go and hunt for a brandy bottle, and when he came back William had sat up a little straighter in his chair and some color had come back to his cheeks. “Agree with me yet?”
“I can see your points,” William said. “Have you brought two glasses? Wonderful. Now listen, and I vow this is my last argument on the subject: she told me that she loves me, despite the ruin I have brought upon her. Can you see how painful this is? That she could form an attachment even as I thwarted her every happiness — that is what concerns me the most. That we might truly be…”
“Romeo and Juliet?” Peregrin broke in dryly. “I think you go too far. A girl of that temperament is not the suicidal kind.”
“No,” William agreed, wincing at the memory of her last words to him. “She would never consider such an action.”
“She will eventually have enough of playing the obedient wife, snatch a rolling pin from the cook, and make that poor sod’s life a living nightmare. He does not keep horses now? I’ll wager that in twelve months’ time he has a new stable built and a horse in every box.”
William thought of Grainne chasing the odious Mr. Maxwell around a kitchen table with a rolling pin and felt marginally better. He added some flour to the tip of her nose and smiled. Then he added some cleavage to her bodice and felt worse. Damnation! How would he ever stop thinking about her?
“You’ll stop,” Peregrin said grimly, and that was when William realized he’d spoken those words aloud. “Believe me, my friend, it will fade with time and distraction.”
William didn’t know that he wanted it to fade. “So this is what love comes to: she learns to overpower her husband and make him miserable as she is, and I wed Violetta and dine at the club every night to avoid her simpers until I die an unhappy man.”
Peregrin looked surprised. “You’re giving up? You’re going to marry her?”
“We’re going back, aren’t we? My father will surely
demand it of me now, and he has the fact that I have put him into his death-bed to use as leverage against me.” William drained his glass and looked bleak.
Peregrin nodded thoughtfully. “I am a little surprised that this girl has shaken you so much. I would never have guessed you would give up your resolve against marrying Violetta.”
The ship rolled on a swell, the Irish Sea rising up against them, William thought, and the whiskey sloshed in the bottle.
He should drink more, lest the bottle topple over and waste the amber liquid within.
Peregrin eyed him as he poured another glass with unsteady hands. “I would rather not carry you onto shore in Wales,” he said grimly. “Perhaps you have drank enough tonight, friend.”
“I am going to drink all the way to London,” William announced with some satisfaction. “All the way to my father’s bed-side. And then,” he paused and took a deep drink. “I am going to tell him that I am going to break the marriage contract.”
“That’s a change. Five minutes ago you were going to marry her.”
“I can change my mind.”
Peregrin sighed and stood up. “I’m going to bed,” he said, indicating the narrow bunks behind them. “I can’t take another moment of this crossing with you. Do try to be quiet.”
William ignored him stalwartly and took another drink. He didn’t need it. His head was swimming, the cabin was spinning — he really had to stop getting so completely foxed. It wasn’t going to help him any tomorrow, when he was rattling in a chaise across the bumpy roads of Wales. It wasn’t going to help him when he went up the dark stairs of his father’s London house, a place he had stormed out of just a few months ago with harsh words flying after him and grim determination on his set face, to visit the sick-bed of the man who had raised him, the man who had taught him to ride, the man who had loved him and challenged him and never taken second-best from him, the man who would not go against his father’s wishes and release him from the insane, impossible, unfair contract that hovered over his every day like a black thunder cloud.
Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback) Page 13