Games of Pleasure

by Julia Ross

  He felt as if his life were temporarily stripped to an unknown essence that he couldn’t quite grasp, while he busied himself with the mundane tasks that his real existence never demanded: gathering firewood, taking care of a horse. Perhaps if he allowed himself to truly comprehend the wheeling silence of the heavens—perhaps if he managed to penetrate the real mystery of this woman—he would learn something so vital it would change him forever.

  As soon as dawn glimmered, Ryder walked back through the woods to the spot where Beauty grazed, hidden in a hollow. Before any farmhand could find that his neglected patch had sprouted such a jewel—like a pearl in an oyster—Ryder saddled her and led her back to Miracle’s camp. Holding the mare by the bit, one hand in readiness over her nostrils lest she whinny, man and horse remained lost among the trees.

  At last Jim started down the path. Before pony and rider were too far out of sight, Ryder swung into the saddle.

  He followed her the same way the next day as the hills gave way to the broad vale of a river, and the stone escarpments of the Cotswolds slipped abruptly into half-timbered prettiness. The drovers’ road now turned west toward Wales. Miracle picked a lane that ran north and slightly east, straight into the heart of England.

  Ryder rode steadily after her, dog tired from lack of sleep.

  They were traveling now through the rich pastures and wood-lands of Warwickshire, where every track led in and out of a village, and every road led straight to a town. Ryder made necessary detours for supplies, then followed Jim’s prints, cantering where he had to, so that he would not fall too far behind. If Miracle was not going to disappear down one of a multiplicity of lanes, he had to stay close on the pony’s heels.

  The third evening she turned down a narrow track through thick woods. It led to a ruined farmyard. The remains of a cattle barn lay open to the sky. Young trees had set up camp like an invading army among the broken pigsties. Locals had obviously been robbing the place of dressed stone for decades. The ground beneath the shattered walls was soft with moss.

  Throughout the drizzly night Ryder kept his vigil with his back propped against the wall of a wrecked granary. The abandoned platforms for the ricks showed gaping holes where some of the stones had been hauled away. A fox trotted by on silent feet, his sharp muzzle testing the air. Ryder met the animal’s questioning gaze for a moment, before the fox raced away into the undergrowth.

  Dawn had begun to dilute the shadows when the sound of heavy breathing ruptured the quiet. A shiver of alertness shocked down Ryder’s spine. Caught on the edge of dreaming, he had almost drifted into sleep.

  Two men were tramping up the path. They were neither masons nor woodsmen.

  The small glow of Miracle’s campfire burnished their ragged clothes and desperate faces. One of the men whistled softly between his teeth and nudged his companion with an elbow.

  “Aye, and there’s a pony, too,” the other man hissed.

  His companion pulled out a long, wicked knife, and stepped forward.

  There wasn’t time to stand. Ryder leaned forward, sitting with both forearms on his knees, and spoke quietly, so that Miracle wouldn’t wake. “Not so fast, my lads!”

  Four eyes swiveled toward him, trying to focus in the half light.

  “Well, if it ain’t a sparrow squatting on a stone,” one man said.

  “A sparrow with pistols,” Ryder replied. “Speak softly, if you please.”

  “I see two empty hands.” The second man stared with obvious belligerence, yet his voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. “Sure you have a gun, mister?”

  The duke’s son raised a brow. “You doubt me?”

  The men looked at each other, then shifted nervously from one foot to another. “No harm meant, m’lord.”

  “I believe you gentlemen have taken a wrong turn. Your path lies to the southeast. I prefer not to waken the lady with any sudden noise, but if needs must—”

  “Of course, m’ lord. Of course.” One of the men doffed his leather cap. The knife had disappeared. “No harm meant, Your Lordship. Jeb and I didn’t mean no harm at all, didn’t mean to trespass on Your Lordship’s lands. We was lost.”

  “Just decent, hungry folk, looking for honest work,” the other man said. “If Your Lordship would happen to be in need—?”

  “No.” Ryder reached into a pocket and tossed a couple of coins. “But here’s something for your trouble.”

  The ruffians grabbed the money from the air, then turned and hurried off down the path.

  The innocent sounds of the woods trickled back into the sudden silence. Miracle turned in her sleep. A deep satisfaction flowed through Ryder’s blood.

  HE was trotting Beauty along a well-worn lane that meandered along a stream bank, concentrating on picking out the pony’s odd-shaped shoe print, when a pheasant burst from the undergrowth. The bird whirred up beneath Beauty’s nose. Ryder’s balance adjusted automatically as his mount twisted and ducked. He gathered reins, annoyed only that he had given her enough slack to allow it to happen. He must be more tired than he knew.

  “Ah,” Miracle said. “So you ride like the god of horses, even in your sleep! Of course, any son of the Duke of Blackdown has spent half his life on horseback.”

  Jim and his rider were blocking the way ahead.

  The mare threw up her head and whinnied. Ryder allowed it, all his concentration riveted on Miracle. His pulse hammered. Broken sunlight cast entrancing shadows over her face as she gazed at him.

  “I’ve always had horses,” he said.

  Miracle patted the pony’s white neck. “Yet you sit your sweet mare like a ghost of the dead. When did you last sleep soundly for an entire night?”

  He stared at her in silence as the question whirled in his head, then he grinned. “Not since before I met you.”

  She bit her lip. “Damnation! Then if you fall to the ground and expire, it’ll be my fault. Meanwhile, wherever I camp, I wake in the morning to find hot embers. Every day I saddle a pony mysteriously groomed by pixies in the night. My food is magically replenished, my bottle refilled. The wee folk, apparently, have been very busy taking care of me.”

  He walked Beauty forward. “Does that annoy you?”

  Miracle turned her pony, and Jim fell into step beside the mare. “No, it amuses me. Or perhaps the truth is that it touches me to the heart.”

  The shattered sunlight made him squint. His eyes burned as if rubbed with ash.

  “I don’t know if you appreciate quite how bloody dangerous this is,” he said. “England is full of desperate men who will turn to anything to survive these hard times. You were already robbed once. No woman is safe traveling alone.”

  “And thus we have Sir Galahad, still keeping vigil?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

  “No, because it was Lord Ryderbourne who faced down those rogues this morning, as calmly as if he were dismissing two grooms who’d mismeasured the oats, or spilled tea onto His Lordship’s boots.” She glanced up at him beneath her lush lashes. “It was really rather splendid.”

  “You saw that?”

  “I did. Though it seemed wiser to pretend to continue to sleep, at least until I could ascertain whether you might need my assistance. You didn’t, of course. You reinforced all that lordly hauteur with such absolute confidence that they thought you owned all those woods and probably the surrounding several thousand acres.”

  “I hoped they would believe something of the kind, and thus that I had armed servants within earshot.”

  “Exactly. But you didn’t have anyone within earshot except me, so you took a hell of a risk to face them down like that. Though I imagine Sir Galahad would follow a damsel into Hades, if he thought she’d become his responsibility.”

  “Hades isn’t necessary. If you will only relent enough to allow me to help you openly, I can hire a carriage to take us both straight to Derbyshire.”

  “You’re tired of riding?”

  He laughed, though it made
his head ache. “No, but I am tired to the bone.”

  “Then we have two choices,” she said. “Either you turn around now and go home—”

  “—or we abandon this whole crazy venture and ride straight to the nearest town to hire a coach and four.”

  “At the risk of being discovered at the first tollgate. I thought you were rather enjoying yourself riding alone through the countryside?”

  He smoothed one palm down Beauty’s mane. “Yes, in an odd way I am. There’s a rather enticing freedom to traveling on day after day without ever turning back. For the first time in my adult life I have no responsibilities other than staying in the saddle.”

  “Which you can obviously do in your sleep. So you’ll pursue your mysterious quest all the way to its unknown destination?”

  “Sir Galahad can do no less,” he said.

  She laughed. “I feared as much. But in the meantime, you need to eat and rest. You’re a ghost. Should that process become complete, your wandering spirit will haunt me for the rest of my days.”

  “I’m tired, but I don’t plan to expire.”

  “Neither do I. Though, alas, if I end up on the gallows, there won’t be that many days left for me to be troubled by your ghost.” She turned the pony to splash through the stream. “An exhausted knight errant is more of a danger than a help in these taxing times,” she said over her shoulder. “So let’s chase the roebuck into the thicket!”

  Feeling slightly bemused, Ryder followed.

  The horses clambered up the opposite bank and pushed through a stand of willows to emerge into a little clearing. On one side it was bordered by the stream where it had looped away from the lane. On the other, short turf ran from the water’s edge to the base of a grassy bank thick with vetch and germander speedwell.

  Miracle slipped from Jim’s back to the ground, tied the pony to a tree, and pulled food from her saddlebags.

  “I discovered this spot quite by accident,” she said. “Something ran across the lane in front of me, so I followed it.”

  “Thus the sacred roebuck leads the wanderers into the magical glade?”

  She sat down on the grass and began to unwrap a meat pie. “The roebuck makes for a better tale, though I think it was actually just a fox.”

  Ryder slid from the saddle, tied Beauty and loosened her girth a notch, then walked up to join Miracle.

  Damsel flies dodged above the water, disturbed only by the occasional jewel flash of a dragonfly. The clearing was cut off from the lane by the stream, and entirely screened from passersby by the intervening undergrowth and trees.

  “Sit,” Miracle said. “Have some wine. The fairy folk also gave me this pie last night. They must have gone into a village bakery somewhere and raided the shelves, though I think that the wine was bottled by Titania herself, aided by Cobweb and Peasblossom.”

  He stripped off his jacket and dropped onto the grass next to her, then lay back with his hat pulled over his eyes and the jacket pillowed under his head. Something plopped into the water: a vole, perhaps, or a frog. Doves called somewhere in the woods. The pungent scent of water mint permeated the air. The sense of peace was almost tangible.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m not hungry.”

  Miracle said nothing.

  Ryder lifted his hat just a little and gazed at her through slitted lashes. Her hair was looped into shining plaits, hiding most of the bruising on her cheek. As if carved from stone, she was staring at the food in her hands, not moving.

  “You’re not eating?” he asked.

  She looked away. “It’s hardly polite to eat alone.”

  He sat up and took her by the shoulders to turn her to face him. “Miracle—”

  Tears spilled over the dark lashes, over the fading marks on her exquisite skin, past the corners of her brave mouth.

  Desire seared his heart. Desire and tenderness and heartbreak. He tossed aside his hat and gathered her into his arms, then pulled her down to cradle her head on his shoulder. He brushed the moisture from her cheeks.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “They won’t hang you. Hanley can never get past me to harm you. I’ll do whatever it takes, but no one is going to haul you in front of any court in this land to charge you with murder.”

  Miracle pulled away just enough to stare down at him, one hand cupping the side of his jaw. Her fingertips strayed softly into his hair. Her lips curved with poignant courage.

  “No, for the wee folk have also sent me a knight in shining armor for my succor.”

  “If you knew me better, you wouldn’t say such things.”

  She stared away into the trees. “Why? Because at the end of this journey, you’ll return to your real life, enriched, perhaps, by this temporary escapade, but with nothing fundamental changed? You don’t need to feel guilty about that.”

  “Yet perhaps there are some things I’d like to change—”

  “Only small things. Certainly nothing that would prevent your settling back into the well-loved path of duty. For you do love it, don’t you? The levy exacted by your inheritance is in truth the deepest joy of your life.”

  “Wyldshay is part of me. Perhaps I know that all the more clearly from having temporarily left it behind.” He stretched and gazed up into the leaves. “Sometimes it’s as if the River Wyld taught a song to my blood that resounds against the bone. I wish I could show you the castle and the estates—”

  “Duke’s sons don’t take females like me home to meet their mothers,” she said.

  “No, I suppose not. Yet are we really so different?”

  “Ha! I was born without even a wooden spoon to my name. My father was a laborer. My brother makes shoes. When I was six years old, I was apprenticed into the local cotton mill.”

  “The cotton mill?”

  “Ay, laddie! ’Appen tha’ ma’es nowt of t’ way folks talk, back in t’ mill?”

  He swallowed his shock. “I’m sorry?”

  “So, even though you have property in Derbyshire, you can’t understand your own people? Which only goes to prove once again that between you and me, my lord, lies a gulf greater than the Milky Way.”

  “Because you know the local dialect?”

  “Language shapes us. The aristocracy are fluent in both English and French, while the serving classes switch between a language that their betters can understand, and the private tongue of the cottage where they were born.”

  “Which is still English.”

  “Is it? My childhood speech was so broad that it might as well have been another language, but even if I’d been born in a castle, I’m still a lady of the night, Ryder. Not someone you can introduce to your family.”

  “I don’t know what I thought,” he said, the shock still reverberating, “but it was never that you had worked in a cotton mill.”

  She brushed her fingertips over his eyelids, gently closing them. “Go to sleep,” she said, breathing the words into his ear. “If you don’t rest, you’ll be of no use to me, nor anyone.”

  Her palms stroked over his temples, brushing his hair back from his ears. The sun beat down on his closed lids, filling his mind with red light. He tried to relax, his hands flung out to each side, drifting on the edge of sleep.

  A cotton mill? How had she escaped such a life? Would she tell him, if he asked? Or would she think it was none of his business?

  If he were not here beside this stream with a courtesan named Miracle Heather, he might be at Reversham, or Tilling Hall, or Templeford, walking in manicured grounds with a succession of ingenues. He had met most of them at Almack’s during the Season. Almost any of them would make a suitable bride, attractive and accomplished. Some even sparkled with wit and intelligence. Yet he had wanted none of them.

  Had he ridden to Monksford Leigh as summer burgeoned over Dorset and proposed to Lady Belinda simply because her home was the closest to Wyldshay?

  “You’re thinking of things that distress you,” Miracle whispered. “Don’t think! Just be.”

&n
bsp; Her hands massaged the tight muscles of his arms.

  Yet thoughts erupted in incoherent little snatches of anguish. A laborer’s daughter . . . a cotton mill. He’d had no idea . . . no idea . . .

  “You’ll never sleep, unless you let it all go,” she murmured. “And you must sleep, Ryder, or you’ll fade away. Then I should indeed be bereft.”

  Sheer exhaustion at last wiped the thoughts from his mind. The stream gurgled. Doves called softly. Her clothes rustled as she moved, easing his buttons, untying the harsh knots of his cravat, loosening the ties of his shirt, tugging away his boots. He allowed it, grateful to rest beneath the hot sun.

  Though the touch of her fingers fired little explosions of desire, he kept them banked and let his mind float.

  A gulf greater than the Milky Way—

  He had almost begun to lose awareness, not even quite sure where he was any longer, when her salt mouth pressed softly against his. Immediately his lips parted, as if fatigue had purged him of everything but tenderness.

  Her tongue touched his with fleeting little strokes, as gently as the demoiselles alighting on the bent river grasses.

  Ryder’s resistance dissolved. Mind and conscience had finally flitted beyond reach.

  Warm honey coursed in his veins. Still supine, still relaxed, he kissed her back, reveling in the growing intoxication of arousal, the delight stirring deeply, the flames licking along his hot bones. Her lips feathered over his, her tongue dancing wicked little dances, then she began to kiss him more profoundly.

  Still kissing, she slid one hand inside the loosened waistband of his breeches. The heady ecstasy of desire launched its imperious demands. He groaned into her mouth as need thundered in his groin.

  Her fingers strayed, stimulating, maddening, exquisite, up and down the length of his erection. Her palm smoothed, cool on his hot flesh. He gasped in a breath, then another, absorbing her kisses deep into his lungs, conquered simply by the longing for fulfillment.

  When she straddled him, a knee on each side of his hips, his hands closed without thought on her waist. His mouth only knew that she was still ravishing his tongue. His mind no longer cared for anything except the luscious feel of her, all suppleness, all female, all curves.