Amanda Scott (39 page)

The stallion tossed his head playfully, then pushed his nose against her hand. Finding it empty, he snorted and turned away.

“Oh, so you mean to sulk, do you?” She looked around, but there was still no one else to be seen. A bridle hung temptingly from a hook near the stall gate. She took it down, and at the sound, he regarded her hopefully again. “Yes,” she told him, “I’ll take you out, but just for a walk, mind. I don’t think I ought to try putting a saddle on you without asking someone.”

As she lifted the latch, there was a sudden, sharper rustle from inside and the stallion shied. Then, before she realized what was happening, he whinnied nervously and reared, his front hooves crashing against the opening gate, knocking her off-balance. With a cry, she stumbled, catching herself on the heavy gate and clinging to it as it continued to swing open.

There was a shout from behind her, but Gwenyth had suddenly seen what was causing the stallion’s distress and, terrified, managed to collect her wits enough to straighten, throw the gate wide, and leap aside. The stallion plunged past her.

Seconds later Lyford had her by the shoulders and had spun her about to face him. “What the devil do you think you are doing?” he bellowed, shaking her roughly.

“I …” She couldn’t speak, but he had already seen what she had seen, and releasing her abruptly, he strode past her to glare into the stall.

“Come out of there at once,” he snapped.

After a long, silent moment, there was more rustling and a skinny little red-headed, freckle-faced boy, no more than eight or nine years old, emerged from the stall, pulling straw from various openings in his neatly patched plaid shirt as he kept his light blue eyes focused warily upon the earl’s angry face.

“What were you doing in there?” Lyford demanded.

Swallowing carefully, the boy said, “Brung Cyrano a carrot.”

“You needn’t go into his stall to give him a carrot.”

Flushing, the youngster looked down at the ground and said, “Warn’t no one about, so I thought I’d give him a brush. The currycomb’s in there,” he added, pointing. “I dropped it when the lady come in and hallooed.”

“You’d no business to be in that stall at all, my lad,” the earl said sternly, “and you certainly ought to know better than to leave the gate open.”

“I never!” The thin face turned up sharply, eyes blazing indignantly. “I shut it, I did. Then the lady come inside, and I knowed I warn’t s’posed ter be there, so I went ter ground, hopin’ she wouldn’t see me. But I never opened yon gate. I wouldn’t! She done it.”

“I did,” Gwenyth said quietly. There was a noise behind them, and looking over her shoulder, she saw that a groom had captured the stallion and was bringing him back. “He is so beautiful,” she said, “that I wanted to see him in the sunlight. He seemed gentle enough, and the bridle was right there. I never expected him to go crazy when I opened the gate.”

Lyford, too, was aware of the groom, now standing patiently, awaiting orders, just behind him. “You and I,” he told Gwenyth quietly but ominously enough to send a thrill racing up her spine, “will discuss your part in this shortly.” He turned back to the boy. “Did you startle him, Joey?”

Looking down again, Joey scuffed the dirt with the toe of one shoe. “Aye, I rightly ’spect I did. Startled me, she did, when she opened yon gate. Knew she’d see me, like as not, and I ’spect I hit Cyrano’s hind leg when I jumped. Made him step on yon currycomb too,” he added with an air of confessing the worst. He looked up from under his sandy lashes, biting his lower lip at the sight of Lyford’s forbidding expression. “I won’t do it again,” he muttered pleadingly.

Gwenyth’s heart was wrung. “Please, sir,” she said, “he’s only a little boy, and it was my fault that the horse got loose.”

Lyford looked at her for a long moment, then looked back down at the culprit. “This is not the first time I have caught you in my stable without permission, is it?”

Sighing wretchedly, the boy shook his head.

The earl’s lips twitched, but his voice remained stern. “You like my horses, don’t you, Joey?”

“Aye.” His eyes lit with enthusiasm. “Me dad says I’m ter be a scufflehunter like hisself, but me, I wants ter be a groom, mebbe stablemaster when I’m growed.”

“A groom needs to learn obedience,” Lyford said gently.

Joey chewed his lip again; then, recognizing that a response was expected, he said, “Aye, that’s true, I ’spect.”

Lyford nodded, satisfied. “I’ll tell you what, Joey. When your father gets home tonight, you tell him what you did—”

“But, he’ll …” The boy’s freckles stood out vividly on his chalk-white face, and he seemed momentarily to have lost his voice. Then, when Lyford remained silent, he took a deep breath and regarded him searchingly, his expression slowly turning to one of calculation. “You won’t tell him yerself, then?”

Gwenyth, watching the earl almost as closely as Joey did, wasn’t surprised to see his lips twitch again, but he said in the soft tone she had come to respect, “No, but I will know if you don’t tell him, and I won’t have anyone working in my stables who doesn’t do as he is told or who is too much of a coward to accept the consequences of his deeds.”

Joey’s expressive face reddened painfully at the word “coward,” but his eyes were sparkling by the time Lyford had finished speaking. “In yer stables? You would take me fer a groom? Kin I tell me dad as much?”

“You may tell him that if he agrees, I will take you on as a stableboy,” Lyford replied. “You’ll muck out a lot of stalls, my lad, and you’ll grow at least six inches before you ever become a groom of mine.”

“I’ll grow fast,” Joey promised. “Kin I start now?”

The earl shook his head. “First, you talk to your father.”

The brightness faded from the boy’s face, making Gwenyth yearn to hug him and tell him everything would be all right. He moved past them, feet dragging, and left the stable without so much as glancing at the stallion or the waiting, silent groom.

Lyford, who had turned to watch him, turned back now, and Gwenyth, unnerved by the look on his face and her anticipation of what he meant to say, said quickly, “What’s a scufflehunter?”

His eyes glinted appreciatively, but all he said was, “Put him away, Ned.” Then, taking hold of Gwenyth’s arm, he moved her gently out of the way, saying nothing more until the groom had put the stallion in his stall, latched the gate, and with a brief nod of his head taken his leave of them. Once he was gone, Lyford said, “Now, then, perhaps you will be so—”

“You didn’t tell me what it means,” Gwenyth protested.

He looked sternly down at her. “What what means?”

“S-scufflehunter.” She licked her lips and tried to step away from him, but he had retained his hold on her arm and he did not let go.

“Scufflehunters are what people hereabouts call the gangs of men who tow the barges upriver,” he said. “Now, perhaps—”

“Then Joey’s father must be very strong,” Gwenyth said, looking at him in distress. “Won’t he …? Oh, Lyford, you ought not to have … Oh, dear, the poor little boy!”

He shook his head, the expression in his eyes softening. “Big Joe Ferguson is about as fierce as a woolly spring lamb.”

She looked more hopeful. “Then he won’t—”

“Oh, he’ll dust the lad’s jacket for him, and he’ll do a thorough job of it, but Joey deserves no less. What he did was both forbidden and dangerous, and I’d have punished him myself had I not known Joe would see to it. As for you—”

“I know,” she said swiftly, seeking to disarm him, “I ought never to have opened that gate, and I apologize, sir.”

But he was not so easily pacified. “You deserve everything that Joey deserves, and more,” he said grimly, still holding her arm and looking directly into her eyes. His expression made her wish that she were far, far away.

“I said I was sorry,” she muttered, wondering how it was that he could make her feel so guilty and ashamed of herself when all her brother’s scolds ever did was arouse her resentment.

He wasn’t through with her. “‘Sorry’ doesn’t pay the piper, Gwen,” he said. “Cyrano is not a woolly lamb, but a stallion grown and utterly unpredictable. He might have killed you.”

She scarcely noticed that his voice trembled on the last words, for they had conjured up in her mind a sudden dreadful vision of the stallion rearing, his steel-clad hooves slashing the air above the crouching, frightened boy. Her stomach clenched with a fear greater even than she had felt while it was happening. “H-he might have killed Joey,” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes. “All because I was such fool as to open that gate and startle them both.” As she stared at him in dismay, the tears spilled over.

“Here, now, none of that. Come here.”

Without protest or thought she went into his arms, letting him hold her tightly against his broad chest, sobbing gently as the hot tears coursed down her cheeks.

He said nothing, just held her, his strength and size fully as comforting as she had expected they would be. That thought stopped her weeping as though a tap had been turned, and she moved to free herself. Briefly his arms tightened, but then he released her and withdrew a large white handkerchief from his jacket pocket. Silently he handed it to her, and she mopped her cheeks without looking at him, sniffing childishly when her nose threatened to run. She blew it, then wadded up the handkerchief and held it in her fist, clenched against her habit skirt.

“You won’t want it back,” she said.

“No.” There was amusement in his voice now, and she looked up to see laughter in his eyes. Then he said gently, “Did you think to unman me with your hardy Welshwoman’s tears?”

“How dare you laugh!” she snapped indignantly. But she knew his accusation was not entirely unwarranted, and her gaze fell when he continued to regard her with mocking amusement.

“There is little that I will not dare in a good cause,” he said in that same gentle tone, “and since you have once again invaded my territory unchaperoned, it occurs to me that I know exactly how to punish you. ’Tis what I have wanted to do since last night, which you do not want me to do, and thus ’tis a most suitable penalty.” His hands came to her shoulders, and as she stared up at him in wide-eyed shock, he drew her slowly toward him, his eyes still alight with silent laughter.

Gwenyth’s mouth was dry, but the only fear she felt was dismay at her own response to his clear intent to kiss her. She ought to slap him, she told herself. At the very least, she ought to resist. Any halfway respectable female would stomp his shiny boots for him or kick him where it would do some good. No true lady would just stand there mesmerized, waiting, her blood racing through her in a way that made her body hum with exhilaration. At the same time, oddly, she felt limp, much too limp to defend herself against what was coming. She had stopped breathing, and at any moment now, she knew, if he didn’t get on with it, she would swoon at his feet in the manner of the very best Gothic heroines.

His lips touched hers, gently, searchingly, his kiss no more than a feather-light whisper of breath upon her skin. With a moan, she pressed upward, rising on her toes, putting her hands at his waist to steady herself as she urged him to get on with it, to stop tormenting her. If he was going to punish her, then let him do so now, at once.

Lyford’s hands moved from her shoulders, caressingly, to the back of her neck and her waist, and his kiss grew more demanding, more possessive. His tongue now pressed gently against her lips, craving admittance. When she didn’t respond as he wished, he moved one finger lightly across the back of her neck, so lightly that it tickled the fine hairs there, chilling her and drawing a gasp of surprise that parted her lips for him.

As he pressed his advantage, an unfamiliar masculine voice spoke from behind him. “I say, Marcus, I didn’t expect to find you tumbling a maid in the stable at this hour. But don’t let me interrupt,” the slim, handsome stranger went on as Gwenyth, in embarrassed dismay, sprang away from the earl. “Truly, I don’t mind waiting my turn. Though I believe,” he added, raising a gold-rimmed quizzing glass to one blue eye, “that I have mistaken the matter. She don’t appear to be a maidservant after all.”

“Your manners don’t improve much, coz,” the earl said, glancing ruefully at Gwenyth. “You insult my guest, the Lady Gwenyth Traherne. Lady Gwenyth, much though I regret his arrival just now, may I present my cousin Jared Hawtrey.”

“At your service, ma’am.” The newcomer’s eyes gleamed with amusement as he swept his hat from his coffee-colored curls and made his bow. He, too, wore riding dress, but his appearance was much more fashionable than Lyford’s, and Gwenyth had no difficulty in identifying him as a town beau. He continued smoothly, “In view of his own manners, I refuse to allow Marcus to condemn mine. Shall I call him out for you?”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Hawtrey,” she said.

“Ah, then do I detect a romance?”

“Indeed not, sir!”

Lyford said easily, “You were nearer the mark the first time, Jared. I owe Lady Gwenyth an apology for taking unfair advantage of her. What are you doing here at such an hour?”

“Couldn’t sleep for all the racket on the river,” Hawtrey retorted. “Worse than the city, because it ain’t a steady drone, don’t you know. More like fits and starts, and I don’t know but what the silences in between ain’t worst of all.”

“Then you arrived last night?”

“Aye, had a breakdown outside Reading. Decided to push on, though, rather than rack up there for the night.”

“Squeezed again, coz?”

Hawtrey shrugged. “Nothing beyond the ordinary. Just don’t care to waste my blunt. Thought you’d approve.”

Lyford looked at him for a long moment, then said casually, “I was just going to invite Lady Gwenyth to take a ride along the riverbank. Care to join us?”

Hawtrey smiled at Gwenyth, letting his gaze drift from the top of her head to the hem of her habit before he said with a drawl, “Don’t mind if I do, at that. And don’t be thinking I’ll be neglecting my duties either, Marcus. My man Powell’s looked after things while I was away. Traherne, did you say? Would you be related to the Earl of Tallyn, ma’am?”

“My brother,” Gwenyth said. “Lady Cadogan is my aunt.”