Sattler, Veronica (27 page)

Ashleigh's
confusion registered in a mild frown.
"Poor
Byron?"

Brett
nodded. "It may surprise you, but the entire business with Lady Caroline
is anathema to him. From its very inception, he was the pursued, not the
pursuer, and to this day, he regrets the whole involvement. He'd give anything
to free himself of the lady's, ah, affections."

"Oh,"
said Ashleigh, "I see...."

Brett
saw her eyes darken before she glanced away and knew she'd been reminded of
another unwanted pursuit.
Damn!
He hadn't wanted to resurrect that!

Looking
about, he searched for a change of subject; a few yards away he spied Irish
Night prancing nervously before his stallion who, though still obediently
rooted to the spot where he'd been commanded to stay, was tossing his head and
eyeing the filly with obvious interest.

"Ashleigh,"
said Brett, "how would you like some help following up on the lesson
you've just taught Irish Night? I might be able to assist a bit."

Grateful
for the change of topic, Ashleigh answered him enthusiastically. "Oh,
Brett! Would you? I've just been bungling along here, not knowing if I'm on the
right track or not."

Brett
grinned. "I would hardly call it bungling! Especially when I consider your
brilliant use of these two able assistants here." He glanced down at Finn
who, tail thumping, sat happily at his feet, and then at the grunting pink mass
beside him.

Ashleigh
smiled happily back at him. "I'll take full credit for Finn, but Lady
Dimples is on her own!"

Brett
arched an eyebrow. "So I've noticed. You know, I've heard it said pigs are
among the most intelligent of the four-footed beasts. In France they use them
to harvest truffles." He glanced down then, and his eyes fastened on the
conspicuous leather belt she had tied over the yellow day gown she and Megan
had stitched together following the humiliating incident with Elizabeth and
Margaret. "What on earth is that?" he questioned, amusement apparent
in the turquoise eyes.

Thinking
he referred to the obvious repair in the costly gown he'd bought, Ashleigh
tensed. While she'd made up her mind not to complain to him of the incident—her
pride, if nothing else, wouldn't let her—she hardly wanted him to think she'd
been careless with something he'd purchased for her, either. "Th-there was
an accident, I'm afraid," she began.

"Accident?"
Brett looked puzzled as he reached for the pair of pie plates hanging at her
side. "An
accident
made you tie this—this paraphernalia about
you?"

"Oh!"
exclaimed Ashleigh, obviously relieved. "Oh,
that!"
She took
the tins from his hand and rapped them together. "That's just a homespun
device for training a skittish filly to grow accustomed to unexpected
noise."

And
as if on cue, Irish Night danced nervously away from where she'd been calmly
cropping grass moments before.

"Hmm,"
said Brett with a nod. He eyed the filly who'd backed as far away from them as
the lunge line would permit and stood watching them with apprehension in her
large, liquid brown eyes. "I think it's time we resumed her lessons, don't
you?"

Ashleigh
grinned. "High time indeed, Your Grace!"

Brett
gave her an overdone frown.
"Miss Sinclair!"
he admonished.

Ashleigh
grinned. "I mean,
Brett!"

The
next few hours flew by for Ashleigh as Brett fell in beside her to work with
Irish Night. First they used Finn and Lady Dimples, repeating the procedure
Brett had witnessed from the stand of trees. Then, when that became familiar,
the little horse all but yawning at the animals chasing at her heels, they
switched tactics. For the next half hour or so, Ashleigh deployed her pie pans
from one side while Brett rushed at the filly from the other, brandishing a
leafy limb he'd broken from a tree and shouting, "Hyah! Hyah!" This
they followed with a combination of Brett wildly waving his riding jacket as he
emerged from behind Raven, and Ashleigh pelting the ground on the horse's other
side with a barrage of pinecones. In the final hour they finished with various
combinations of all these methods, relentlessly forcing the little horse to jump
and jump again, refusing to let her balk, repeating and repeating, until at
last she, and they as well, stood exhausted in the fading afternoon light.

Brett
stood with his jacket slung over one shoulder and watched Ashleigh feed Irish
Night a lump of sugar as a reward for her performance. "You'll spoil her
rotten, you know," he said, but as Ashleigh glanced up at him, his smile
told her the criticism was not to be taken seriously.

Ashleigh
returned his smile. "Reward, I think, goes so much further than punishment
in driving a lesson home. And that's the reason I refused to take along the
training whip Old Henry offered me when I started to work with Irish. Your head
groom was highly indignant, I'm afraid. 'Yer not t'
use
it on 'er!' he
cried. 'Merely t' take it
wi'
ye t' show 'er ye mean business!'"

Brett
laughed at her excellent imitation of Old Henry's humble country accent.
"So, off you stalked, whipless and armed with sugar lumps and your
faithful little menagerie!"

Ashleigh
watched him come forward and run a firm but gentle hand over the filly's
withers. "She's far too fine and spirited a horse to risk breaking
harshly, Brett. When I was a little girl I saw a horse that had been thus
broken, and—and it was
horrible!"
The blue eyes turned dark with
pain as she recounted the incident. "You see, I'd seen the horse before it
happened... such a fine young colt. He was being sold at a country fair I
attended with my—my father and brother. I remember staring at his shiny,
blood-bay coat and wishing I might have such a horse someday, when I outgrew my
pony. Father laughed and said I'd have to wait several years for
that.

"Well,
the day at the fair ended, and we returned home, all thoughts of the blood-bay
colt forgotten... until a winter's day several months later..." Ashleigh
stared off into the distance and was silent for several long seconds before
shaking her head sadly and resuming her tale.

"He—he'd
been purchased by the drunken son of an earl who was one of our neighbors... a
huge brute of a man who liked to boast of his taking a 'personal interest' in
his father's stables." She raised her face to Brett and he saw the
shimmering tears in her eyes. "Oh, Brett, it was pitiful! That beautiful
young animal, reduced to a bro—" a sob caught in her throat "—a
broken thing... a piece of dull meat on four legs with all the spirit beaten
out of it! Dear God! I wish I could forget that sight!"

Tears
were streaming down her cheeks now, and Brett found himself somehow
immeasurably moved by this evidence of her compassion, and surprised that he
felt so. He'd always disdained weeping and other displays of conspicuous
emotion by women, regarding them as just so much additional evidence that
females were weak and frivolously sentimental—if not devious—using tears as a
means of manipulating men to their own selfish ends. But the pain and selfless
sincerity he saw in Ashleigh's face was far removed from the maudlin hysterics
he'd witnessed in the women he'd known, and he felt himself drawn by it in ways
he wasn't sure he was prepared to deal with.

Slowly,
as if feeling his way through uncharted waters, he placed a hand on her
shoulder while, with the fingers of the other, he gently wiped the tears from
her upturned face. "Sometimes things happen for a reason, little
one," he said softly. "Perhaps you were meant to have seen and recall
that brutality."

Ashleigh
looked at him questioningly.

"From
what I've seen today, you have a delicate way with animals. Your every action
speaks of a finely honed sensitivity, not to mention endless patience. And the
proof is in how they respond to you. Perhaps your bitter memory has served you
well."

Ashleigh
beheld his gaze with wonder in her own. Was this gentle man the same who had so
ruthlessly taken her and stripped her of her honor not two months earlier?
Where was the mocking laughter, the cynical gleam in his eyes? Nothing about
the man who stood before her now, or who had laughed with her in this meadow
moments before at their successes with the little filly, reminded her of the
one she'd sworn would pay for his callousness of an earlier day!

Dizzily
she tried to fit the two images together, her head swimming with scenes of
Brett forcing her onto the bed, of him standing beside Madame with an immovable
expression on his face, and then—
this!
She closed her eyes, to shut out
the confusion, telling herself now was not the time to sort out what was
happening. She only knew she was immeasurably grateful for the apparent
transformation and resolved, for the moment, to deal with it as she found it.
Opening her eyes, she looked again at his, which were still focused on her face
as if trying to read what they saw there, and she slowly nodded her head and
smiled.

When
he beheld her smile, at once so open and full of joy, Brett felt a wrenching in
his gut the likes of which he'd never known before. Suddenly he was overwhelmed
by a desire to take her in his arms and never let her go, to hold her to him
and protect her from ever again facing anything that could frighten her or give
her pain. What in hell was happening to him?
It
was only a smile, for
God's sake!
But even as he attempted to dismiss it, he knew it was far, far
more than that. With it her whole face lit up, lovely beyond telling, and the
beautiful spirit within Ashleigh Sinclair shone like the sun in the heavens.

Abruptly,
awkwardly, for he knew he was out of his element here, Brett turned and glanced
about them. "It's getting late, little one. I don't know when you told Old
Henry to expect you back, but I think we'd better be going before they send
someone to search for you."

Wondering
at his sudden uneasiness, Ashleigh merely nodded, then followed him as he
strode toward the horses. When they reached Irish Night, she looped the lunge
line several times, shortening it until she had a coil that ended just beneath
the filly's halter and prepared to begin the long trek back to the stables. She
looked up at Brett who was now astride his stallion. "I—I thank you for
your help this afternoon," she told him. "If you should find them
worrying about me at the stables, please tell them I'm fine and will be along
shortly."

She
was unprepared for the frown that crossed the duke's brow. "And just where
do you think you might be going?" he queried.

"Why,
I—er, to the stables, Your Grace," she stammered.

"Afoot?"
he
demanded incredulously.

"Well,
y-yes," she replied. "I promised not to mount—"

"I'm
well aware of what you promised, young lady, but if you think I'm going to
allow you to
walk
back while
I
ride,
think again! You're
riding with me!"

With
a quick, muscular movement, he reached down, and before Ashleigh realized what
was happening, she found herself swung upward by two iron-strong hands and
seated sideways before him in the saddle, her lunge line left in the grass.
Brett grasped for the filly's tether, let it play out behind them, and urged
his stallion forward. "That's better," she heard him murmur just
behind her right ear.

His
strong arms came about her as they began to move, and Ashleigh found herself
shivering, though the air was warm. She could smell the scent of him with this
nearness, a scent that was a combination of some masculine soap he used, clean
sweat, tobacco and horses, and for some reason, inhaling it made her giddy.
Once again she found her heart hammering in her chest, dampness gathering on
the palms of her hands. She tried to tell herself this was all because she had
reasons to fear this man's nearness, but in her heart she knew these sensations
were born more of pleasure than fear.

"Of
course," Brett was saying, "I suppose I could have overridden Old
Henry's order forbidding you to mount Irish Night. She's perfectly safe on the
flats." He glanced down at Ashleigh's yellow gown, then eyed the filly as
she trotted beside them. "But neither you nor she seems to be accoutered
for riding...." Suddenly he chuckled. "Not that that seems to have
stopped you before! Where did you ever learn to ride, little one? And bareback,
at that!"

Ashleigh
giggled, then arched a delicate eyebrow as she glanced up at him. "I
assure you, Your Grace, the bareback riding was a first for me that day. As for
the other—" Brett saw her eyes darken, and she looked away "—I had a
brother once.... He... taught me how to ride."

Seeing
she found discussion of her dead family difficult, Brett decided not to pursue
it, though he found himself increasingly curious about her early past. Perhaps,
now that he was back in Kent, and would be likely to spend more time with her
in the days to come, he might soon find a chance to broach the subject again,
especially if they got to know each other better.

Suddenly
Brett found himself looking forward to the coming weeks, in a way that far
exceeded the anticipations of a few hours before, and a light ripple of
laughter broke from him with the realization.