by Nora Roberts
The faintest ghost of a smile touched the thin lips. “Thank you, my lord.”
* * *
Jem the groom seemed well on the way to making himself and the horses at home. Brigham heard his cackling laughter as he pushed aside the wooden door.
“You’re a right one, ain’t you, Master MacGregor? Sure and Lord Ashburn has the best stable in London—England itself, for that matter—and it’s me who’s in charge of them.”
“Then I’ll have you look at my mare, Jem, who’ll be foaling soon.”
“Pleased to have a look at her I’ll be—after I’ve seen to my loves here.”
“Jem.”
“Eh—” He turned and saw Brigham standing in a beam of thin winter light. “Yes, sir, Lord Ashburn. I’ll have everything set to rights in a twinkle.”
Brigham knew that Jem couldn’t be faulted with horses, but he also had a free hand with the bottle and language the MacGregors might not deem proper for their youngest. So he lingered, supervising the settling of his team.
“Fine horses they are, Lord Ashburn.” Malcolm had taken a hand in the grooming. “I can drive very well, you know.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Brigham had stripped off his greatcoat and since his jacket was ruined in any case, he added his weight to the work. “Perhaps we’ll find an afternoon so you can show me?”
“Truly?” There was no quicker way to the boy’s heart. “I don’t think I could handle your coach, but we have a curricle.” He gave a manly sneer. “Though my mother won’t let me drive anything but the pony cart by myself.”
“You’ll be with me, won’t you?” Brigham swatted one of the horses’ flanks. “They seem to be in good shape, Jem. Go have a look at Master MacGregor’s mare.”
“Please, sir, would you look in on her, too? She’s a beauty.”
Brigham laid a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder. “I’d be delighted to meet her.”
Satisfied he’d found a kindred spirit, Malcolm took Brigham’s hand and led him through the stables. “She’s Betsy.” At the sound of her name, the mare poked her head over the stall door and waited to be rubbed.
“A lovely lady.” She was a roan, not beautifully distinguished, but dignified and trim enough. As Brigham lifted a hand to stroke her head, she pricked up her ears and fixed him with a calm, questioning eye.
“She likes you.” The fact pleased Malcolm, as if he often trusted the opinions of animals over those of people.
Inside the stall, Jem went about his business in a calm, capable way that impressed the young Malcolm. Betsy stood tolerantly, sighing occasionally so that her heavy belly shook, and switching her tail.
“She’ll be foaling soon,” Jem pronounced. “Another day or two by my guess.”
“I want to sleep in the stables, but Serena always comes and drags me back.”
“Don’t fret about it, Jem’s here now.” With that, Jem stepped out of the stall.
“But you will send word when it’s time?”
Jem looked at Brigham for affirmation, got it and grinned. “I’ll send up a shout for you, never fear.”
“Could I impose on you to show Jem to the kitchen?” Brigham asked. “He hasn’t eaten.”
“I beg your pardon.” Abruptly proper, Malcolm straightened his shoulders. “I’ll see that the cook fixes you something right away. Good afternoon, my lord.”
“Brig.”
Malcolm grinned at the man, and at the hand he was offered. He shook it formally, then skipped out, calling for Jem to follow.
“A taking little scamp. If I may say so, milord?”
“You may. Jem, try to remember he’s young and impressionable.” At Jem’s blank expression, Brigham sighed. “If he begins to swear like my English groom, the ax will fall on me. He has a sister who would love to wield it.”
“Yes, milord. I’ll be the soul of propriety, I will.” Breaking into a grin, Jem followed Malcolm out.
Brigham didn’t know why he lingered. Perhaps it was because it was quiet, and the horses were good company. It was true that he’d spent a good part of his youth in the same way as Malcolm, in the stables. He’d learned more than a few interesting phrases. He could, if necessary, have harnessed a team himself in only half again as much time as his groom. He could drive to an inch or doctor a strained tendon, and he had overseen his share of foalings.
Once it had been his dream to breed horses. That had changed when the responsibilities of his title had come to him at an early age.
But it wasn’t horses or lost dreams he thought of now. It was Serena. Perhaps because his thoughts were on her, he wasn’t surprised to see her enter the stables.
She’d been thinking of him as well, though not entirely kindly. Throughout the day she hadn’t been able to concentrate on ordinary things. Instead she concentrated, unwillingly, on that moment she had stood with him by her brother’s window.
She’d been tired, Serena assured herself as she wrapped the plaid securely around her. Almost asleep on her feet, if it came to that. Why else would she have only stood there while he touched her in that way … looked at her in that way?
And how he’d looked. Even now, something stirred in her at the memory. His eyes had gotten so dark; they’d been so close. She knew what it was to have a man look at her with interest, even to have one try to steer her into the shadows to steal a kiss. With one or two, she’d permitted it. Just to see if she might care for it. In truth, she found kissing pleasant enough, if unexciting. But nothing before had come close to this.
Her legs had gone weak, as if someone had taken out the blood and replaced it with water. Her head had spun the way it had when she’d been twelve and sampled her father’s port. And it had felt, Lord, as though her skin were on fire where his fingers had touched it. Like a sickness, she thought.
What else could it be? She shook the feeling off and straightened her shoulders. It had been fatigue, plain and simple. That, and concern for her brother, and a lack of food. She was feeling a great deal better now, and if she chanced to come across the high-and-mighty earl of Ashburn she would handle him well enough.
She shook off her thoughts and peered around the dim stable. “Malcolm, you little heathen,” she called, “I’ll have you out of those stables and into the house. It’s your job to fill the woodbox, hang you, and I’ve done it myself for the last time.”
“I regret you’ll have to hang Malcolm later.” Brigham stepped out of the shadows and was pleased to startle her. “He isn’t here. I’ve just sent him along to the kitchen with my groom.”
She tossed up her chin. “Sent him along? He’s no servant of yours.”
“My dear Miss MacGregor.” Brigham stepped closer, deciding that the dull colors in the plaid were the perfect foil for the richness of her hair. “Malcolm has formed an attachment for Jem, who is, like your brother, a great horse lover.”
Because her heart was softest when it came to Malcolm, she subsided. “He’s forever in here. Twice this week I’ve had to bundle him up and drag him into the house past his bedtime.” She caught herself and frowned again. “If he pesters you, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know. I’ll see that he doesn’t intrude.”
“No need. We deal together easily enough.” She was frowning over that as he stepped closer. She smelled of the lavender that always seemed to waft around her. “You need more rest, Serena. Your eyes are shadowed.”
She had nearly stepped back before she was able to resist the unusual urge to retreat. “I’m as strong as one of your horses, thank you. And you’re very free with my name.”
“I’ve taken a liking to it. What was it Coll called you before he fell asleep? Rena? It has a pretty sound.”
It sounded different when he said it. She turned to study his horses. “You’ve impressed Malcolm with these, I’m sure.”
“He’s more easily impressed than his sister.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “You have nothing that could impress me, my lord.”
“Do
n’t you find it wearying to despise all things English?”
“No, I find it fulfilling.” Because she was feeling weak-kneed again, and needful, she turned on him, letting anger replace longings she did not yet understand. “What are you to me but one more English nobleman who wants things his way? Do you care for the land? For the people? For the name? You know nothing of what we are,” she spat out. “Nothing of the persecutions, the miseries, the degradations.”
“More than you think,” he said softly, guarding his own temper.
“You sit in your fine house in London or your manor in the country and dream by the fire of values and great social change. We live the fight every day, just to hold on to our own. What do you know of the terror of waiting in the dark for your men to return, or the frustration of not being able to do more than wait?”
“Do you blame me, too, for your being born a female?” He caught her arm before she could spin away. Her shawl fell away from her hair and onto her shoulders so that the evening light struggling through the doorway and the chinks in the wood glowed over it. “I might curse myself for preferring you that way.” He resented bitterly his automatic response to her. “Tell me the truth, Serena, do you despise me?”
“Aye.” She said it with passion, wanting it to be true.
“Because I’m English?”
“It’s reason enough to hate.”
“It’s not, but I think I’ll give you one.”
To please himself, he thought as he dragged her against him. To undo the knots in his stomach, calm the thunder in his loins. She jerked back and might have landed a blow, but he was prepared for her, and very quick.
The moment his mouth came down on hers, she went still. He heard her breath suck in, then only the buzzing in his own head. She had a mouth like rose petals, soft, fragrant, crushable. With an oath, he wrapped an arm around her waist and locked her to him. He could feel her breasts yield and her body tremble. His own was rigid with the shock of the sensation that poured through him.
Behind them the horses blew and shifted weight. Dust motes danced in an errant sunbeam.
She couldn’t move. She thought she might never move again, because all the bones in her body had dissolved. Behind her eyes was a rush of color, so vivid, so brilliant, that they would certainly blind her. If this was a kiss, then she had never experienced one before, for this was all heat, all light, all movement, in one meeting of lips.
She heard a moan, such a soft, such a sweet moan, and never recognized it as her own. Her hand was on his arm, fingers tangled in the tear of his sleeve. She might have swayed, but he held her so close.
Was she breathing?
She had to be, for she lived still. She could smell him, and the scent was much the same as it had been on their first meeting. Sweat, horses, man. And he tasted … Her lips parted, she thirsted for more. He tasted like honey warmed in whiskey. Wasn’t she already drunk from him?
Her heart began to thunder, drumming in pulses she hadn’t known existed. If there was more, she wanted to find it. If this was all, it was enough for a lifetime. Slowly she slid her hands up his arms, over his shoulders and into his hair. Her kiss changed from one of shock and surrender to one of demand.
He felt her teeth nip at his lip and a fire centered in his loins. Suddenly desperate, he pressed her back against a post and savaged her mouth even as it opened and invited him in. In that instant he was more her prisoner than she his.
He surfaced like a man drowning, gulping in air and shaking his head to clear it. “Good God, where did you learn to do that?”
Right here, right now. But shame and confusion stained her cheeks. However it had happened, she had let him kiss her and, Lord help her, she had enjoyed it. “Let me go.”
“I don’t know if I can.” He lifted a hand to her cheek, but she jerked her head away. Struggling for patience, Brigham stood where he was and tried to catch his breath. A moment ago she had kissed him in a manner to rival the finest French courtesans. But now, right now, it was painfully clear she was innocent.
He could kill himself—if Coll didn’t beat him to it. Brigham set his jaw. Seducing the sister of his friend—the daughter of his host—in the stable, as though she were a tavern wench. He cleared his throat and stepped back. When he spoke, his voice was stiff.
“I offer my deepest apologies, Miss MacGregor. That was unforgivable.”
Her lashes swept up. Beneath them her eyes were not sheened with tears but bright with anger. “If I were a man, I’d kill you.”
“If you were a man,” he said, just as rigidly, “my apologies would hardly be necessary.” He bowed and went out, hoping the cold air would clear his head.
Chapter 4
She would have enjoyed killing him, Serena thought. With a sword. No, a sword was much too clean, much too civilized, for English vermin. Unless, of course, she used it to sever small pieces from him one at a time rather than end his worthless life with one thrust through the heart. She smiled to herself as she imagined it. A quick hack there, a slow, torturous slice here.
Her thoughts might have been gruesome, but no one would have guessed by looking at her. She was the picture of quiet feminine occupation as she sat in the warm kitchen and churned butter. It was true that when her thoughts darkened she brought the plunger down with unwarranted force, but the energy, whatever its source, only made the job go faster.
He’d had no right to kiss her that way, to force himself on her. And less right than that to make her like it. With her hands wrapped around the wooden staff, Serena sent the plunger dancing. Miserable English cur. And she had patched up his hurts with her own hands, served him a meal in her own house. Not willingly, perhaps not graciously, but she had done it nonetheless.
If she told her father what Brigham had dared to do … She paused for a moment as she dreamed of that possibility. Her father would rage and bellow and very likely whip the English dog within an inch of his miserable life. That made her smile again, the picture of the high-and-mighty earl of Ashburn groveling in the dirt, his arrogant gray eyes clouded with terror.
She began to churn faster as her smile turned into a snarl. The picture was right enough, but she’d prefer to hold the whip herself. She would make him whimper as he sprawled at her feet.
It was true, and perhaps sad, Serena thought, that she had such a love of violence. It concerned her mother. No doubt it was a pity she hadn’t inherited her mother’s temperament rather than her father’s, but there it was. It was rare for a day to go by when Serena didn’t lose her MacGregor temper and then suffer pangs of guilt and remorse because of it.
She wanted to be more like her mother—calm, steady, patient. The good Lord knew she tried, but it just wasn’t in her. At times she thought God had made the tiniest mistake with her, forgetting the sugar and adding just a dab too much vinegar. But if God was entitled to a mistake, wasn’t she then entitled to her temper?
With a sigh, she continued the monotonous chore of working the plunger up and down.
It was true enough that her mother would have known exactly the proper way to handle Lord Ashburn and his unwanted advances. She would have become frigidly polite when he’d gotten that look in his eyes. That look, Serena thought, that told a woman instinctively that he meant mischief. By the time Fiona MacGregor had been done with him, Lord Ashburn would have been putty in her hands.
For herself, she had no way with men. When they annoyed her, she let them know it—with a box on the ear or a sharp-tongued diatribe. And why not? she thought, scowling. Why the devil not? Just because she was a woman, did she have to act coy and pretend to be flattered when a man tried to slobber all over her?
“You’ll be turning that butter rancid with those looks, lassie.”
With a sniff, Serena began to work in earnest. “I was thinking of men, Mrs. Drummond.”
The cook, a formidably built woman with graying black hair and sparkling blue eyes, cackled. She had been a widow these past ten years and had the hands of
a farmer, thick fingered, wide palmed and rough as tree bark. Still, no one in the district had a better way with a joint of meat or a dainty fruit tart.
“A woman should have a smile on her face when she thinks of men. Scowls send them off, but a smile brings them around quick enough.”
“I don’t want them around.” Serena bared her teeth and ignored her aching shoulders. “I hate them.”
Mrs. Drummond stirred the batter for her apple cake. “Has that young Rob MacGregor come sniffing around again?”
“Not if he values his life.” Now she did smile as she remembered how she had dispatched the amorous Rob.
“A likely enough lad,” Mrs. Drummond mused. “But not good enough for one of my lassies. When I see you courted, wedded and bedded, it’ll be to quality.”
Serena began to tap her foot in time with her churning. “I don’t think I want to be courted, wedded or bedded.”
“Whist now, of course you do. In time.” She gave a quick grin as her spoon beat a steady tattoo against the bowl. The muscles in her arms were as solid as mountain rock. “It has its merits. Especially the last.”
“I don’t want to find myself bound to a man just because of what happens in a marriage bed.”
Mrs. Drummond shot a quick look at the doorway to be certain Fiona wasn’t nearby. The mistress was kindness itself, but she would get that pinched look on her face if she heard her cook and her daughter discussing delicate matters over the butter churn.
“A better reason is hard to find—with the right man. My Duncan, now there was a man who knew how to do his duty, and there were nights I went to sleep grateful for it. Rest his soul.”
“Did he ever make you feel”—Serena paused a moment, groping for the right words—“well, like you’d been riding fast over the rocks and couldn’t get your breath?”
Mrs. Drummond narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure that Rob hasn’t been around?”
Serena shook her head. “Being with Rob’s like riding a lame pony uphill. You think it’ll never be done with.” Her own eyes were bright with laughter as she looked up at the cook.