by Mary Balogh
"Gerald," Miss Hester Darwin said, "Mama made you promise not to let us ride fast and not to go galloping on ahead of us."
"I will see you all back in Bath, then," Freyja said, turning her horse off the roadway and edging it through a gap in the hedgerow into the field beyond.
Already she felt more exhilarated. She nudged her horse into a canter and did not look back to see if anyone had the courage to follow her. But if no one else did, she guessed, the Earl of Willett probably would. He would feel duty-bound to escort her. Perhaps after all she had trapped herself into a tête-à-tête with him. She urged her mount to a faster pace. Ah, she could feel the air in her face at last.
She could hear hooves thudding behind her. She hoped that if he had come, he was not alone. She turned her head to look and felt instant relief. Of course! She might have known that the Marquess of Hallmere would be the one to take up the challenge. It was he, after all, who had suggested this ride-for just the two of them. And it was he who had winked at her-again!-when Miss Darwin had expressed her hope that the party would not ride too far or too fast.
He was grinning. That, of course, was no surprise.
"Do you see that white rock?" he asked, coming up alongside her as she slowed somewhat and pointing ahead with his whip.
There was a white speck in the distance. At least three fields lay between it and their present position. But from the rock, jutting out over the land below, there must be a splendid panorama that included the city of Bath.
"That is to be the finishing point of our race?" she asked, anticipating what he was about to say. "Very well. I will wait for you there." She spurred her horse and bent low over its neck.
It was not her own horse, of course, but it was no slug. It responded to her commands with a surge of power. She knew only a moment's apprehension as they approached the first hedge. But it would be ignominious indeed to turn aside to find a gate. The horse soared over with surely a foot to spare, and Freyja laughed. With her peripheral vision she could see the marquess not quite one length back from her. If he was holding back out of a gallant intention to allow a lady to win, she thought, he would learn his mistake. But he was not, of course, a man from whom she need fear undue gallantry. He got past her long before the next hedge loomed near and cleared it a full length and more ahead of her. He had a splendid seat, she noticed admiringly.
The race became everything after that. She had always been intensely competitive, perhaps the more so because she had always been small and the only girl among numerous boisterous boys-her brothers Aidan, Rannulf, and Alleyne, and the neighboring Butlers, Jerome, Kit, and Sydnam. She had never felt like a girl with a sister. Morgan was seven years younger than she. She had competed with the boys and made herself their equal.
She competed now, urging her mount on ever faster and faster, hearing the thunder of its hooves beneath her, feeling the wind whip at her hat and her hair and riding habit, watching the gap between her and the horse ahead getting narrower and narrower until by the time they jumped the final hedge, they were almost neck and neck.
The marquess made the mistake after they had landed of looking across at her, perhaps in some surprise to see that she had caught up since he was certainly not making allowances either for the fact that she was a woman or for the fact that she rode sidesaddle. As they converged on the huge white rock, she was in front of him by a whole head. She whooped in triumph and turned to laugh at him.
"I have not had so much fun in ages," she cried.
"I am glad I allowed you to win, then," he said.
He was incautiously close. She reached out with her whip and dug him in the ribs with it.
"Ouch!" he said. "Where did you learn to ride like that? I expected to be fully rested and fast asleep here by the time you came trotting up." He swung down from his horse's back and tethered it to a tree, and then he strode over to her and reached up his arms. "Allow me."
She set her hands on his shoulders and would have jumped down, but he lifted her with strong hands at her waist, slid her all-too-slowly down his front, and then, as soon as her feet were on firm ground, dipped his head and kissed her on the lips-as he had done on another memorable occasion.
His hands circled her wrists as he lifted his head. "I graciously concede defeat with a kiss," he said, grinning. "And at the same time I protect my nose from having a fist collide with it."
He was an enormously attractive man, she thought. That was no new discovery, of course. But what surprised her was that at this particular moment it was not just an intellectual realization. She could feel her body reacting to his attractiveness with a heightened awareness and slight shortness of breath. She had not reacted physically to any man since Kit.
But the Marquess of Hallmere was certainly not the man with whom to conceive any sort of passion. Would he not be delighted if he could bring her to such discomfiture? She smiled her feline grin at him, released her wrists, and turned away to climb up onto the white rock. The wind whipped at the heavy skirts of her riding habit and at her feathered hat. She pulled the latter off impatiently, pocketing the pins that had held it to her hair, and then she could not resist pulling out her hairpins too. It was sheer bliss to raise her head and feel the wind blowing through her hair. She drew a deep breath of air and expelled it slowly.
"A Viking maiden standing in the prow of a Viking ship," he said from down below. "You would have inspired a boatload of warriors into hacking their way ashore and conquering a new land for you."
He had one booted foot up on the rock, one arm draped across his leg. In his other hand he held his hat. His hair blew about, gleaming very blond in the sunlight.
"I have often suspected," she said, "that I was born in the wrong era."
"Lady Freyja Bedwyn," he said, "I do not believe I insult you by observing that you must be well past the age of twenty, do I? Why are you still unmarried?"
"Why are you?" she countered.
"I asked first."
She looked out at the view and drew in another deep breath of air.
"From birth," she said, "I was intended for Jerome Butler, Viscount Ravensberg, eldest son of the Earl of Redfield, my father's neighbor. We were betrothed when I was twenty-one. He died before I was twenty-two and before we married."
"I am sorry," he said.
"You need not be," she told him. "We grew up together and were fond of each other. I mourned his death. But we felt no grand passion for each other."
"How long ago did he die?" he asked.
"Longer than three years," she said.
"And there has been no one else in all the time since then?" he asked.
"It is your turn," she told him. "Why are you not married? You too are well past the age of twenty."
"I grew up as a poor relation in the home of my uncle, the late marquess," he said. "He had a son, my cousin Albert. I would not have been considered a good catch until his accidental death five years ago suddenly made me the heir. My uncle had three daughters but no more sons. I suppose I became instantly eligible as soon as I became the heir, but from the time of Albert's death until the present I have scarcely been in one place long enough to form any lasting attachment."
"Am I to commiserate with you?" she asked, gazing down at him. "Or has the life suited you very well? Love them and leave them, is it?"
He chuckled. "My grandmother still wants me to court you," he said, "even after you began to rip up at me again during her party. She thinks you are merely high-spirited. She believes you need a firm hand on the rein. Mine, in fact."
"Setting aside the fact that you mentioned the last point-perhaps even invented it-entirely to arouse my ire," she said, "your grandmother is going to be disappointed, is she not? You have no wish to court me and I have no wish to be courted. At least we are in agreement over that."
He got up onto the rock then and came to stand beside her. She was reminded of how very tall he was, how well formed.
"You are quite right," he said. "I do not h
ave marriage in mind, and, fortunately, neither do you. I need not fear, then, that you will get the wrong idea if I tell you that I feel an almost overpowering urge to kiss you properly. Will I acquire two black eyes and a broken nose if I give in to that urge?" He turned his head to smile dazzlingly at her. His eyes, as she fully expected, were dancing with merriment.
She drew breath to deliver the withering set-down that such pretension deserved. But it was tempting. She was twenty-five years old and had not been kissed in four years. Jerome, strangely enough, had never kissed more than the back of her hand. Sometimes the emptiness and the aloneness of having loved and lost Kit were almost too much to bear.
And here was a man-a handsome, devastatingly attractive man-who expected nothing from her beyond a kiss and who knew that she would demand nothing in return.
"The lady hesitates," he said. "Interesting."
"You would not suffer any mutilation to your face," she said firmly. "Not unless you were to fall from the rock on your way down."
She felt horribly embarrassed then and horribly-and foolishly-aware of her ugliness. It was years and years since she had given up lamenting what could not be changed. Nature had given her a wild bush for hair and eyebrows that were a different color from it, and her father had handed on to her the Bedwyn nose, as he had to all his offspring except Morgan, who, like their mother, was perfection itself.
Freyja turned determinedly as he set down his hat in a sheltered hollow and then took hers from her hand and set it there too. She lifted her chin.
He flicked it lazily with the knuckle of his forefinger. His eyelids had become rather heavy, she noticed, and they had the strange effect of causing her insides to perform a flip-flop. This definitely had not been a good idea, but it was too late now to say no. He would be able to accuse her of cowardice, and with some reason.
He was certainly taking his time. She had expected him to dip his head and claim her lips without further ado. At least then she could have closed her eyes and hidden her embarrassment. Both his hands were up and touching her face, though he did that only with his fingertips. He ran his thumbs over her eyebrows, one forefinger lightly down her nose.
"Interesting," he said. "You have an interesting face. Unforgettable."
At least, she thought, he had not called her beautiful. Out of sheer principle she could not have continued if he had.
His hands cupped her face.
"You may touch me too, you know," he said, "if you wish."
"I do not wish. Yet," she added, and watched laughter flicker behind his eyes.
He rubbed his nose lightly across hers and then angled his head and touched his lips softly to hers for a moment. Her hands came to rest on either side of his waist. She had to concentrate upon not snatching herself free and breaking into a run. How mortifying that would be!
Skittish, aging maiden-unchaperoned-flees clutches of practiced rake.
His tongue was licking softly, enticingly against her lips. She gripped his waist a little harder, leaned a little closer, and parted her lips. His tongue came through and curled up behind to stroke the soft, moist flesh within. Raw sensation burst to life in every part of her, from her lips to her knees-no, to her toes. She slid her arms about his waist, stepped closer until her bosom was pressed to his chest and her abdomen to his, and opened her mouth.
He kissed her then with all the skill and expertise of what she later guessed to be a man of vast experience, who must have practiced his art on half the female population of Europe-at least half. She could only cling and press closer and use her tongue to fence with his and give as much as she could of her own meager skills out of sheer self-defense.
It suddenly felt like midsummer during a heat wave.
She had no idea how long it lasted. She did know that when she started to come to herself-it was when she sensed that he was about to lift his mouth from hers at last-she could feel one of his hands spread across her bottom, holding her firmly against him. And she was not such an innocent that she did not understand perfectly well exactly what she was being held firmly against.
"Well," she said, her voice only slightly breathless when he lifted his head and looked down at her, his eyelids considerably more heavy than they had been before he started, "that was very pleasant."
The smile began in his eyes and spread to his lips and then had him throwing back his head and shouting with laughter as he released her.
"That was my very finest turn-the-lady's-knees-to-jelly kiss," he said. "And it was very pleasant? And so it was too. I had better get you back up on your horse, Lady Freyja, and myself back on mine before my self-image has been quite deflated. I do believe there is a village over the next rise or the one beyond it. Shall we ride that way and see if we can find an inn or a pastry cook to feed us? Kissing is hungry work."
He grinned as he offered her her hat and put his own on with a flourish, pulling it low over his brow to prevent its being blown away in the wind.
Her knees, she realized after testing them surreptitiously before she took a step forward, were going to bear her up. That was certainly one of the more foolish things she had done recently. She had expected little more than a peck of the nature of the other two kisses he had dealt her-one in the inn room at their first encounter and the other after he had lifted her off her horse this morning. She might have guessed when he had talked of kissing her properly that he had a great deal more in mind.
She felt considerably discomposed and was not enjoying the feeling one bit. It helped that he was so careless about the whole thing that he did not seem to realize that she was not quite herself. He would surely have taken advantage of the situation if he had suspected. He would have slain her with his grinning wit.
She set her booted foot on his clasped hands, and he tossed her up into the saddle before mounting himself.
"Of course," she said in her haughtiest voice, "that was not an open invitation to maul me whenever the urge is upon you. It was a pleasant embrace, but it is not to be repeated. That would be a bore."
"There," he said, turning a laughing face to hers before leading the way across the hill in the direction of the village he thought was close by, "a set-down was not to be avoided after all. I am crushed, deflated, robbed of all my confidence with the fair sex for all time. Perhaps it will be the epitaph on my tombstone-his life was very pleasant, but any repetition would be a bore. I need some strong liquor. A tumbler of brandy at the very least."
Freyja rode after him, smiling at his back.
Now that had been a foolish error of judgment, Joshua thought while they sat in a small inn parlor, eating meat pasties and drinking tea and ale, and all the way back to Bath.
She had looked really rather magnificent standing up on that rock, her hair free and wild as it had been the first time he saw her, but with the sunlight on it and wind in it this time. He had wanted to kiss her-but in the same sort of light, flirtatious way he had treated her all through their encounters so far.
He had not-he had certainly not-intended kissing her that way. And he had not anticipated her own wild outpouring of passion. Which was foolish of him really. Despite all her haughtiness, he had had ample evidence that she was a woman of forceful character and uncertain temper and impulsive nature.
She would, he suspected now, be all wild, unleashed passion in bed.
It was something he would have been altogether more comfortable not suspecting at all since the only way he could verify such an enticing idea was through marriage, and marriage was just not in his immediate or medium-term plans.
It was fortunate indeed that it was not in hers either.
He escorted her all the way to Lady Holt-Barron's door in Bath and took her horse back to the livery stable from which it had been hired. Then he stabled his own horse and arrived back at his grandmother's in the middle of the afternoon, feeling windblown and full of energy and determined that he must leave Bath within the next few days before he was tempted to step into some further indiscr
etion with Lady Freyja Bedwyn that perhaps he would not be able to step out of so easily.
His grandmother was entertaining in the drawing room, Gibbs informed him. She had asked that Lord Hallmere call on her there immediately after he returned from his ride.
Joshua followed the butler up the stairs, checking to see that his riding clothes were at least marginally respectable for a brief appearance in the drawing room. But his grandmother had said immediately. He had better not take the time to go to his room to change.
There were two ladies with his grandmother. Joshua had seen neither of them in five years, but there was no mistaking his aunt, the Marchioness of Hallmere. She was of medium height and slight build and looked sweet and frail and even sickly. She had always looked the same way. But the outer appearance, as he had discovered to his cost during his years at Penhallow, hid a steely, domineering will, and a mean, humorless disposition. The younger woman with her, less plump, less plain than he remembered her, was Constance, her eldest daughter.
His aunt never left Penhallow. It was her domain and she ruled it like a private fiefdom. Even the desirability of taking her daughters to London when they reached a suitable age for presentation to the queen and an introduction to the beau monde had not coaxed her away. It must be something of immense importance that had brought her to Bath.
Himself, no doubt.
He had ignored her invitations to come home to Penhallow. So she had taken the extraordinary step of coming to him-informed of his presence here, no doubt, by her friend Mrs. Lumbard. His heart landed somewhere in the soles of his boots.
"Aunt?" he said. "Constance?" He bowed to them both before greeting his grandmother with a stiff smile.
"Joshua," his aunt said, getting to her feet and coming toward him, both slender hands outstretched. Her voice shook with emotion. There were tears in her eyes. "My dearest boy. We have been living in anxiety for too long, my poor girls and I. Hallmere-the late Hallmere-is gone, and Albert is gone. We are entirely at your mercy. You were raised at Penhallow just like one of our own, of course, but the young often forget the debts they owe to those who loved them and sacrificed for them during their growing years."