“When the butler said you were out in the gardens with the earl, I must confess, I was worried,” Ned said, drawing her from her private thoughts. “I was greatly relieved to see that you were escorted by two children. Unsuitable as chaperones but effective, no doubt.”
Effective, indeed! As if without the children, she and Simon could not be trusted. As if alone they might suddenly grab hold of each other simply because they were a man and a woman.
Jenny nearly snapped at Ned when she recalled precisely how easily she and the earl had gone from chatting like friends to kissing like lovers. Instantly, the flame of embarrassment leaped into her cheeks. Leaning away from Ned, she turned her face toward the carriage window.
“Honestly, Ned, I fail to see how my whereabouts or my companions are your concern.”
“That is only because we have not yet had our conversation that I requested this morning. I believe the happy conclusion of which will very much make your activities my concern.”
Jenny clucked her tongue. Thankfully, they were nearly home.
“This is hardly the time what with young George injured and my horse missing. Hardly the time,” she repeated, hoping he would take the hint and realize there would never be a good time. “I do thank you for fetching me.”
Ned plunged ahead. “I will help even more when our households are joined.”
She could see her sweet house coming into view but jumping out of the moving carriage was certainly not the best course of action.
“Our households are already joined, in a way,” she told him, still looking out the window. “After all, we’re second cousins.”
“Only by marriage,” he reminded her. “If circumstances go as hoped, you can stop being your mother’s helpmate, always at her beck and call.”
“I like helping my mother,” Jenny insisted. And her current state was far more desirable than being at Ned’s beck and call.
Nearly there. She gripped her fingers on the small brass door handle.
“Your mother should remarry. It is the natural course of things. A man marrying a woman. Don’t you agree?”
“In my mother’s case, I think it too soon after my father’s passing.”
“And in your case?” Ned asked. “Guinevere, will you—”
She nearly laughed at finding out Ned didn’t know her real name. Except this was no laughing matter.
The carriage had stopped but was still rocking when she turned the handle and thrust the door open before jumping down to the ground, shocking Ned’s footman who was still climbing sedately off the dickey.
“I must check on George. Thank you again.” With that, Jenny dashed inside, leaving Ned still in his carriage.
*
Thankfully, George had, at most, a cracked rib where he’d been kicked by the horse’s hind leg. Bruised and resting, George was effusively apologetic.
Jenny tried not to think of the physician’s cost. It had been a necessary expense. She let the boy tell his story.
“One moment, Thunder was facing me, looking calm as you please, and the next, he must’ve heard a sound. He swiveled where he stood and kicked me.”
“You’re lucky it wasn’t in the face,” Cook said. She sat on the edge of the bed beside her son. “You could’ve lost an eye, my poor Georgie.”
“I’m fine, Mum. I’ll be right as rain soon. You heard the doctor.”
“He’ll be fine,” Jenny said to no one in particular because the words sounded reassuring. “But we must find Thunder before he does himself any more injury.”
Turning to her mother who stared back at her expectantly, Jenny realized that it would fall upon her to do exactly that, find the blasted horse. Henry didn’t ride, and George was not fit to do anything but rest and heal. Then there was Ned who had not even offered to go, loudly complaining that it was a fool’s errand and that the cursed horse had probably fallen into a ditch.
“And good riddance!” he’d added, making himself scarce.
She couldn’t find it in her heart to be annoyed. As it turned out, he was terrified of horses, exactly as Maisie had proclaimed days earlier, due to having been thrown when he was a boy. After all, Jenny didn’t like spiders yet she had no such excuse.
After donning a well-worn riding habit, Jenny saddled Lucy, putting a coiled rope and bridle in one saddlebag and a bunch of carrots in the other. Certain that her stable boy was in good hands, she set out alone to wander the surrounding countryside looking for Thunder.
Maggie, Eleanor, and Maisie discussed accompanying her, but she told them to stay put. The former was too feminine, in Jenny’s estimation, and unless she needed someone to flirt with Thunder or speak French to him, Maggie was useless. As for the latter, younger girls, they were too loud, always talking and laughing. They would scare Thunder before she could get within fifty yards.
Luckily, George had seen the direction in which their horse had run, and she and Lucy dutifully followed. It wasn’t terribly difficult to pick up the animal’s trail. What with his large size and cantankerous disposition, he’d broken shrubbery and crushed many plants in his path. Still, it took her long enough to find the beast that Jenny was prickling with sweat and annoyed when she finally spotted Thunder.
Relief at seeing her horse, and seeing him upright and apparently unharmed, quickly gave way to fear when she realized his predicament. Thunder had crossed a narrow stream, probably running blindly, and then come upon a rocky outcropping and a low hanging tree preventing farther passage forward. Unfortunately, the horse was clearly unwilling to re-cross the stream now that he had time to think about it.
There seemed no point in forcing docile Lucy to traverse the stream merely to join the irritable and unpredictable Thunder on a tiny patch of grass.
Dismounting, Jenny tethered Lucy to a low-hanging elm. Then she retrieved a carrot from the saddlebag and held it toward Thunder. The horse actually tilted its head, staring at her and at the offering as if she were asking a great deal of him for very little.
Whistling and calling to him for a few minutes, she finally declared defeat in keeping her feet dry. She would have to face down her own fear of traversing the stream and of staring down a horse that towered over her. Feeling inadequate to the task and beaten at the start, she knew that the one person whom she wanted to ask for help was in no position to provide it.
Thus, Jenny found herself at the edge of the stream, facing an agitated horse. Holding the carrot in front of her like a talisman of safety, Jenny lifted her skirts with her other hand and stepped into the stream. Water rushed into her riding boots.
“Thunder!” she exclaimed rather than unleash the unladylike oaths that she wished to utter. It was terribly uncomfortable, and she moved swiftly to the other side.
At her approach, the horse took a step back, coming up against a prickly branch that caused it to drum its hooves into the moist earth and toss its head.
Hesitating and feeling foolish standing there with a carrot in her hand, still she reached out to the animal. Obviously, she should have grabbed the bridle and rope instead but had thought only of soothing Thunder with a treat.
As she stepped closer, sure enough, the horse reared. From her place upon the sloping bank, Jenny thought Thunder looked larger. Terrifyingly so. She had made a miscalculation, she feared. Perhaps a costly one.
Hastily backing into the water, she considered her position. Were they at an impasse?
“Jenny!” Impossibly, the unmistakable voice of Simon Devere sounded. In no way, however, could she imagine how the Earl of Lindsey was there.
“Get out of that stream,” he commanded, “and away from that horse.”
If Ned had ridden up and said such a thing, she would have felt a flash of temper at being ordered about like a child, and then, most likely, she would have done the opposite to whatever he’d said. However, with Simon, she obediently obeyed.
In a moment, she was back on his side of the stream, watching Lord Lindsey dismount from a lovely dappled
gray gelding.
*
Simon looked the young woman up and down. Jenny appeared unhurt, though obviously wet and in some peril. If she’d gotten closer to that terrified animal, she could have been struck. Right on her lovely head.
“I cannot believe you came out here alone to retrieve a possibly injured and assuredly distressed horse.”
“If not I, then who?” she asked, gaping at him as if he were a spirit from the other side.
“Your friend,” the earl said. “The one who grabbed your arm and dragged you off.”
“Oh, Ned,” she said dismissively. “My cousin.”
Hearing the man who’d snatched Jenny from his midst was her cousin did nothing to eradicate Simon’s feeling of annoyance. The man had been unforgivingly forward with Jenny back at Belton Manor, then had the gall to let her attempt a perilous rescue by herself.
Obviously, this Ned person lacked every single esteemed virtue, including chivalry.
“Cousin or beau,” Simon said, “he should be here, not you.”
She shrugged. “The question is, my lord, how can you possibly be here?”
“Honestly, I hardly know myself.” He tied his horse near Lucy. “To be frank, which I feel I can be with you, when you headed away to deal with your injured stable boy and your horse, I was unprepared for the anger that overcame me.”
“Anger?”
He nodded. “Yes, at myself. Everything in me wanted to help you, yet the idea of venturing out seemed an impossible task. How ridiculous!”
“No, my lord. Not ridiculous. Not after what you’ve been through.”
“Nevertheless, the momentary depth of my own fear did, indeed, anger and then shock me. When you left me behind with the children, I realized how tired I am of being afraid, especially when I can’t determine precisely of what I am fearful. I wasted precious time standing in my room willing myself to follow you.”
“You are here now,” she said softly. “And I am exceedingly grateful.”
He brushed off her placating words. “I am not a cowardly poltroon, a nidget who lets others do what I can ably do. I am good with horses, or I used to be.”
Simon always had an affinity for equines. Riding had come naturally to him and he had gentled his fair share of horses for inclusion in his father’s stables. He hoped he still had the knack. No need to tell Jenny how he had sweat buckets and gritted his teeth until he nearly cracked them while waiting for his own horse to be saddled. He’d nearly fled to his room half a dozen times.
Once he was astride Luster, his favorite mount who seemed to know him at first sight even after three years, Simon had been relieved to find he felt perfectly at ease. He’d then ridden hell bent to her family’s cottage, only to discover she’d set out alone.
“I am truly grateful, my lord. Thunder seems bigger somehow out here in the open.” She waved her hands around, one sad limp carrot still in her grasp.
Ignoring her reasonable statement and her lovely, endearing smile, Simon went to the mare that Jenny had securely tethered and began to rummage in the closest saddlebag.
More blasted carrots! What on earth had she been thinking?
“I know you have a bridle and rope with you somewhere.”
“The other bag, my lord. I still cannot believe you are here! How on earth did you find me?”
He shot her a glance. She looked particularly attractive in the late-day sun, with a little grime on her nose and her dress plastered around her ankles showing the outline of her legs. In fact, she looked infinitely kissable, and he was counting on another opportunity in the near future to taste her sweet lips.
“Please, call me Simon. It seems we’ve become good enough friends for that, don’t you think?”
Her cheeks became infused with pink. He hadn’t meant to embarrass her. If anyone should feel embarrassed, it should be him, especially after his last emotional display in the garden.
“How did you know I had a bridle and rope?” she asked.
“Because you are a practical girl.”
“Yes, of course.”
She almost sounded as if he’d insulted her.
“How did you find me?”
From her other saddlebag, Simon pulled out a rather old, short rope, which caused him to roll his eyes, and then a worn but usable bridle.
“I’m not a military tracking expert, but this was a rather simple expedition, and your mother pointed me in the right direction. Now stay put and let me take a look at this animal.”
Making sure she nodded her agreement, for he did not want to find her suddenly at his elbow and again in harm’s way, he entered the chilly water. In moments, he’d forded the stream and found himself face to face with the unfortunate Thunder.
“You don’t look happy,” Simon muttered in soft tones. “Look at the whites of your eyes. And those are some very flared nostrils. Come on, ol’ boy. No one wants to hurt you. I only want to get you back on the other side of the scary water.”
The more he spoke, the calmer the horse became. Eventually, it lowered its head and grabbed at some green grass, ripping it from the earth and chewing.
Simon still hadn’t touched Thunder, but very slowly, he lifted his hand before the horse’s nose, making sure it saw him before he stroked it from forehead to muzzle. Then he leaned in to stroke its neck.
So far, so good.
Raising his other hand, letting the horse clearly see it, Simon brought the bridle in close and slipped it over the horse’s head. Easy as eating custard. Yet, as soon as he moved to the horse’s left side and attempted to close the buckle, it shied away. He tried again, and it jerked its head to the side, pawing at the ground.
An impasse.
Chapter Twelve
“How is it going, my … um, Simon?” she asked.
Jenny could perfectly well see how it was going. He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked her a question.
“Tell me again what happened to this horse.”
“Something spooked him, and he kicked our stable boy.”
Simon shook his head with impatience.
“No, before that. What caused him to behave differently than he ever has?”
She tilted her head to the side. Her chestnut-colored hair, which had come undone during her ride, lay draped over one of her slender shoulders. With the last rays of the sun on her, Jenny was all warm and inviting, with those large brown eyes and gently parted lips. Lips that had been luscious and soft under his. He realized she was speaking.
“First there was the injury to his cannon, front right, as I recall.”
Simon looked down. Thunder’s leg below the knee looked healed and was properly bearing the horse’s weight though he could see by its marred hair where the injury occurred.
“Then he got his head deep into a raspberry bush. After that, he has not been the same. George and I deduced, from the way Thunder behaves, that he might have scratched his left eye.”
Simon looked at the horse. Certainly, the left eye was watering profusely, though he saw nothing that looked like infection. He brought his hand up toward it, and the animal didn’t move. When Simon’s palm got quite close, however, Thunder shied away as if entirely surprised.
“What would soothe you, beastie?”
“What did you say?” Jenny called out.
Simon considered. “I don’t suppose you have a rag or lightweight cloth?”
“There is a blanket on Lucy, under my saddle. She has boney hips and—”
“Too heavy.”
They stared at one another over the stream.
“There’s nothing for it, then.” With that, Simon shed his jacket, which he hung over a nearby branch, and then removed his collar and cuffs, which he wedged into his jacket pockets.
“My lord?” Jenny queried.
“You’re supposed to call me Simon,” he reminded her, unfastening the front of his shirt.
“You’re not supposed to be undressing,” she pointed out.
“My shirt is the pe
rfect weight of cloth to cover Thunder’s eyes. The only other garment that might work would be if you are wearing a cotton chemise. I don’t suppose you wish to strip down to that garment.”
“Absolutely not,” she said, her tone strangled, as he finished removing his shirt and stood before her bare-chested.
Simon couldn’t help glancing at her. There was the adorable bloom that suffused her cheeks whenever certain emotions flowed through her. In his mind’s eye, he could picture her standing before him with only a cotton shift clinging to her curves.
How deeply would she blush if she knew what he was thinking?
“Anyway,” he said, bringing his thoughts back to the task at hand, “what Thunder can’t see won’t scare him.”
If only Simon could say the same about himself. Yet in truth, it was a similar issue. If his eyes were open, he needed to see clearly where he was and hang onto that reality with every fiber of his being. When he closed his eyes, if he kept them that way, he stayed safe, neither in the hellish prison in Burma, nor in the heavenly English countryside that might be unreal. With eyes shut, he existed in a place where nothing existed and nothing could be taken from him.
Clearly, Thunder needed that reprieve as well.
“Hang on, Thunder boy,” he murmured. “You’re going to like this, and that’s a promise. Just like that lovely girl standing over there made promises to me and kept them. She said she would return, and she did. She said she was real, and she is.”
Keeping up a soothing, one-sided, foolish conversation with the horse, Simon managed to tie his shirt around the horse’s head, covering its eyes and securing it in place with the sleeves. Thunder didn’t protest, nor did he try to shake off the garment.
And when Simon was finished, he fastened the bridle straps that were still dangling, attached the rope, and stepped into the stream.
“Your coat,” Jenny called out.
Ah, yes. He was still unclothed from the waist up. Glancing at her, he realized she was staring hard at him. Did she like what she saw? He wished he had the physique he’d had three years earlier. He’d been far more muscular then, from riding, boxing with Toby, and rapier practice.
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