With This Ring (11 page)

Hastings smirked.
“Says the man who spent the night with that fair-haired minx!
How long had it been for you, eh?
Years?”

Aaron went very still.
“Hastings, you have earned my everlasting gratitude.
However, if I ever hear another such slur upon Miss Elektra Worthington, I will kill you before you manage to inhale once more.”

Hastings drew back, something oddly like respect in his shadowed gaze.
“Aye, then,” he muttered.
“If ye feel so strongly about it.”

Aaron held his gaze.
“I do.”
There was no reason for his hot and sudden rage.
He fought it back with difficulty.

Hastings, usually irrepressible on the topic of carnal prospects, changed the subject.
“Are ye goin’ on to the estate now?”

Aaron wished he could reply in the affirmative, but he couldn’t.
He wished he could run for his life and leave the young ladies here to await their family!

When would that be?
A day?
A week?
The two young ladies in question—one simply mad, the other decidedly contrarian—had already proved that they could not be trusted to the care and feeding of a pebble, much less take proper heed of their own safety.
Aaron shuddered to think what mischief the two of them could concoct in a matter of hours, much less possibly days!

Stay here with them until help arrives.

Help in the form of the demented soldier and assistant highwayman brother, who ought not to have let his sister out of his sight in the first place?
Thank you, no.
Aaron didn’t need help like that.

He’d be better off taking them back to London by himself.

Oh, hell.
Aaron ran one hand through his hair.

London.

Hellfire and damnation.

London on the way to his destination had been visited as swiftly and silently as possible.
They’d scarcely left the docks.
Hastings had purchased the carriage and team while Aaron had watched from the background.
The fine clothing had been had from a secondhand stall in the market, again with Hastings as the front man.

Aaron had always known that he would have to face the city again someday, but he had hoped it would not happen until he was rightfully the Earl of Arbodean—and even then, he wouldn’t have minded giving matters a few more years to die down.

Then, of course, his plans were struck by the cannonball that was Miss Elektra Worthington!

Hastings choked on his broth when he heard.
“London?
Are ye mad?
If anyone recognizes ye—”

Aaron shrugged helplessly.
“There’s no other choice.
Besides, I’m just an irascible manservant named Hastings, remember?
Beneath anyone’s notice, right?
Isn’t that how you slide past close scrutiny?”

Hastings smirked.
“So ye have been payin’ attention to me lessons.
What about yer grandpapa, then?”

Aaron thought it through for a moment.
Casting his gaze about the room, he saw a small stack of foolscap and a bottle of ink that had been provided for “his lordship.”
Swiftly, he inked a quill and in his finest handwriting delivered a nicely worded apology for his “indisposition” and tardiness, along with the inn’s address.

He did not seal it.
“Let the innkeeper see it before he posts it for you.”

He also wrote out the address of Worthington House in London.
“Here is where you’ll find me if you need to.
I don’t expect to be more than a few days away.”
With a very Hastings-like tip of his hat, he climbed back through the window.

He thought his urgent schedule might encounter some argument from the young ladies, but he discovered they had already returned to the pony cart.

“Of course.”
Miss Bliss blinked uncommonly blue eyes at him.
“I should like to begin my Season as soon as possible.
If I am any later,” she told him earnestly, “the best matches will already be made.”

“I had already decided so.”
Miss Elektra scarcely bothered to look at him.
“You’ll ride alongside, of course.
Bliss’s silly little pony can’t pull three.”
She turned away, muttering something about “men, always needing to state the obvious!”

Once Aaron had given in to the winds of fate, it was surprising how quickly the three of them were once more upon the road.
Miss Bliss set a brisk pace with her pony.
Bonnet ribbons flying in the breeze, the two ladies looked very much alike from Aaron’s position behind and properly to one side.
Cousins indeed.

Except there was a lissomeness to Miss Elektra Worthington’s figure—although most would probably find Miss Bliss Worthington’s charms more impressive.
And Miss Bliss had a sweetly modulated voice—yet Miss Elektra seemed rather more interesting to listen to.

They were both very pretty young ladies.
Are you trying to choose between them? Because here’s an option—choose flight! Forget this gentlemanly gesture and ride this ill-tempered nag north as fast as it can gallop!

Except that it wasn’t a gesture.
Somehow, somewhere along his journey to prove to his grandfather that he was a worthy man, he’d stopped thinking about how things looked and begun to care about how they truly were.

And in his heart, he could not turn his back on two vulnerable women.
He could not ride away without knowing she—they—were safely in their family’s embrace once more.

Having a conscience was bloody damned annoying.

*   *   *

Aaron’s mount, a bay gelding of particularly stupid and lazy nature that Hastings had immediately dubbed Lard-Arse—which had unfortunately stuck, since Aaron honestly couldn’t think of any moniker more fitting—had taken a liking to Miss Bliss Worthington’s perfect little pony mare.
The mare, well aware that she was a pedigreed beauty and that Lard-Arse was an inferior oaf with suspicious intentions, had loathed him on sight.

Aaron had no differing opinion to offer in defense of Lard-Arse, so he tried to keep the gelding an inoffensive distance from Bliss’s dainty pony.

However, with pounding head and indecisive stomach not improving from the ride and Lard-Arse’s jolting trot, Aaron became distracted in his mission of hauling the stupid beast’s head in a more suitable direction and let the reins slacken.

Before he could catch the idiot, Lard-Arse had lowered his brick-shaped head to the level of the pony mare’s silken tail and offered her an unseemly compliment.

The mare, who up till now had posed as a creature of extraordinarily good nature and training, bestowed upon Lard-Arse three lightning kicks directly in his lewd and unbearable nose, screeched abuse upon his lack-witted head, and took off down the dusty road as if demon-possessed.

“Bianca!
Bianca, stop!”
Bliss stood up in the seat and sawed at the dainty ribbon reins with admirable skill and some unexpected muscle, while Elektra leaned her full weight on the decoratively cast brake while clinging to her cousin’s skirts with her other hand.

Unfortunately, the cart and ladies were quite light for a sturdy pony’s strength, and Bianca pulled them along, rocketing wildly from one side of the lane to the other.

Aaron and Lard-Arse were so surprised by Bianca’s insane flight that they stopped short with unfortunately identical expressions of witless astonishment on their faces.

Aaron came to first, and leaning forward, lashed Lard-Arse with the reins, digging his boot heels into the horse’s sides.
“Hah!”

Lard-Arse took off like a shot.
He might not be smart, or well mannered, or particularly reliable, but his pretty pony darling was disappearing over yon hillside—and he had longer legs and he meant to use them.

*   *   *

There was no screaming, Aaron would recall at a later point.

Not a girlish squeal.
Not a feminine screech.
The two young women held their tongues and held on tight.
Bliss didn’t look to be sawing on the reins, either—a beginning driver’s last resort, and one not inclined to soothe an irate equine.

Though small, ponies, like this sturdy Welsh pony, were bred for backbreaking work that would kill a proper horse.
This one had speed and the endurance of generations of mining beasts.
The pony would simply have to run her fit of temper out.

Aaron encouraged more speed from the gelding anyway, for although the pony would not mean to run into danger, she was hardly the best judge of that at the moment.

And sure enough, danger loomed.
The road dipped once over that last hill, and without the drag of the cart, the pony gained speed.
The decreased elevation of the road could mean a simple valley between hills, but that valley could hold—

Yes.
Aaron’s gut flipped sideways as he spotted the river ahead.
He’d recalled it correctly.
At the base of this particular stretch of road he’d had a bad moment driving his ill-fated carriage over it.
Swollen yet further by the recent rains, it rushed with white curls of foam mere inches below the humble log bridge that spanned it.
The bridge was hardly wider than the wheels of an average carriage, so in normal circumstances the dainty pony cart should have no issue crossing—

The speeding wheels hit the planks of the bridge with a sound like rolling thunder.
Bliss stood in the driver’s seat, fighting to keep the pony centered on the narrow span.
It wasn’t a wide river, and the bridge was no longer than six or seven yards.
Aaron raised himself in the stirrups, holding his breath even as Lard-Arse gained on the cart, unable to tear his gaze away from the prettily lacquered wheels of the cart, so damned close to the rough edge of the bridge.

Then a thick branch hit the side of the bridge, carried on the strength of the storm-swollen current.
The pony shied, just a bit, but it was enough.
The left wheel flew over empty space and the cart flipped hard into the downstream side of the roiling water.

“No!”
Aaron didn’t bother to dismount.
He pulled his feet from the stirrups and dived from the saddle directly into the water.

He came up quickly to find himself bobbing along in the current alongside the cart.
It had flipped fully until now it swept sideways before him, pulling a frantically swimming pony along with it.
Aaron grabbed the side bar and pulled himself higher, casting his gaze frantically around him.
In the cart, Bliss’s fetching bonnet swirled lazily in the circling water that sloshed inside.

There!
A fair head rising from the froth!
The sun shone from the soaked blond strands, and Aaron breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Elektra strike out for the bank with a strong swimmer’s stroke.
But where was Bliss?

The river narrowed here, between high banks, and rushed fast and deep.
Up ahead, Aaron spotted a hand flailing from the rapids.
Then a dainty booted foot.
Bliss was being tossed hem-over-teakettle by the rushing water, unskilled or unable to free herself from the pull of the current!

Aaron clambered over the bucking cart and dived forward into the river.
Swimming hard, he reached the last place where he’d spotted the struggling Bliss.
The current was fierce and unstable.
It was all he could do to remain upright, yet he tried to kick himself higher, the better to see ahead.
Where was she?

“There!”
came a cry like a bird over the roar of the river.
“She’s there!”

Aaron looked up at the bank to see Elektra running alongside, slipping in the muddy grass, pulling herself around saplings, running hard like a boy.
She was pointing ahead, her gaze locked on something in front of them both.
Aaron struck out, as powerfully as he could, trusting her to direct him.

“Left!”
he heard, and pulled hard to the left.

“Faster!”
He put his face into the water and pulled mighty strokes from his aching arms and thrashing legs.

“Just there!
Just ahead!”

Aaron reached out and felt the drag of waterlogged fabric in his fingers.
He twisted it hard into his fist, knowing that he had little time left, and followed it up with his other hand, letting the current pull him and his limp burden along as it would.
If he could just reach her head, get her face above the water—

He pulled a dripping blond head from the current and raised it to his shoulder, holding Bliss close as he swept the dripping hair from her face.
“Breathe!”
he ordered, and she did.

Never had he heard so sweet a sound.

This girl would not die.

He continued to hold Bliss up with one arm about her waist while stroking the other through the water, slowly pulling them to the bank where Elektra still ran, following them in the current’s grasp.

Then Elektra’s strong hands were pulling at her cousin’s shoulders and Aaron dragged himself onto the bank on his knees.
The current still dragged at his sodden boots and he had the random, exhausted thought that he hadn’t been truly dry in days.

“She’s breathing!
She’s alive!”

Quickly Elektra worked over her cousin.
Aaron stayed on the ground next to her, but it was all he could do to draw breath while she turned Bliss on her side to cough up river water while Elektra pounded her on the back.
When her cousin was breathing evenly at last, and her blue eyes opened, Aaron watched Elektra sit back on her heels next to him.

Reaction seemed to hit her at last.
Her breath caught once, then twice.
Then she turned right into his arms.

Her chilled body quivered in his hands.
He thought of a bird he’d found once as a boy.
The poor creature had flown into one of the great paned windows of the manor, tricked by the diamond clarity of the spotless glass.
It had sat, shaken and shocked into stillness in his cupped palms.
He’d thought it most horribly wounded after having taken such a blow, until it suddenly spread its wings and beat its way into the air before he could close the tent of his fingers around it.

That was much the way Elektra suddenly shook off his tender hold, pulling back, then pushing herself onto her feet, putting her safely out of his reach.

Did she think I meant to put her in a cage?

The only sign of distress she displayed now was a swift brush of her fingertips across her eyelids … or possibly it was only a brisk brushing of her fallen hair away from her face.

“Well.
That was rather unpleasant.
Tell me, Mr.
Hastings, whyever did you bring that unruly beast?”