Yankee Earl (16 page)

      
“You great beggar, you,” she said, giving the horse's nose a pat as she pulled the treat from her pocket and offered it to him. “Let's see about getting you saddled up so you can earn your apples.”

      
She stepped outside the stall and reached for a bridle hanging on the wall, but just as she took hold of it, an unfamiliar voice broke the dawn stillness with the guttural harshness of the London slums. “Wal, wot 'ave we ‘ere now? Ain't ye a fine-lookin' farm gel. That arse is prime, specially in them breeches.”

      
Rachel turned to see the large, battered face of Fox's “body servant,” Mace, leering at her. He advanced with swaggering steps and placed one huge meaty paw on her arm. She yanked free with a snarled oath. His ugly slash of a mouth opened in a wide grin that revealed blackened and broken teeth. “I likes 'um that fights, yes I do,” he said, seizing her again and yanking her against his huge body.

      
“Tis a good thing, for you will rue this day,” she gritted out, nearly gagging from the stench of his rotten teeth. He obviously did not recognize the viscount's daughter from yesterday, much less the splendidly tricked-out woman she had been at Cargrave's ball. “I am Harleigh's daughter,” she said in an iron voice.

      
Mace laughed, fondling her breast as his scarred fist ripped the fabric. “Arleigh's gel dressed like th' sorriest stable ‘and? Ye takes me fer a bloody fool. I seen ‘er, an’ she don't look nothin' like ye.”

      
She twisted in his grip, angling toward the center of the stable where the saddle rack stood three feet high. There would be no reasoning with the half-witted swine.
If only I can—

      
Her thoughts were cut short as Mace's body suddenly crumpled forward, nearly carrying her down with him. Rachel jumped clear as Jason landed another kidney punch to the boxer's back. Incredibly, Mace managed to stay on his feet, though he was gasping in agony as he turned to face his attacker. But before he could put up those menacing fists to deliver a blow, Jason seized his left arm and twisted, pivoting on one foot while slamming the other into Mace's knee.

      
The giant's knee buckled, and he went down in an ungainly heap. Then with blurring speed the earl used the toe of his boot to deal a sharp kick to his opponent's temple. Mace flopped over as limp as a wet rag, out cold.

      
Just as Jason turned to Rachel, Bradley entered the stable and froze at the sight before him. The marquess had made it clear to the riding instructor that Jason might attempt to kidnap Fox. He and Mace had been charged with preventing that at all costs.

      
Bradley dashed forward, attempting to draw a pistol from his coat pocket, but the earl was too quick for him. Before Bradley could pull back the hammer, Jason was across the stable floor, knocking the weapon from his hand and delivering a sharp punch to his midsection, followed by another to his jaw, sending him sprawling into the hay.

      
The entire sequence of events had taken but a few seconds. The Yankee stood between his two felled opponents, not even winded from the exercise. Ignoring the obviously unconscious riding instructor, he made his way over to the boxer to be certain the far larger man would not be getting up any time soon. Rachel was slack-jawed with amazement as he stepped over Mace's prostrate form and his eyes swept her from head to toe.

      
“Dear God, did he hurt you?” He could see that her shirt was torn and an ugly bruise would soon form on her shoulder. He wanted to kick the bastard lying on the floor another time just for good measure, but the string of oaths issuing from his damsel in distress stopped him cold. “Are you all right?” he asked again, growing uneasily certain that her ire was directed at him, not Mace.

      
“You brick-headed, maggoty-brained, addledpated Yankee! I could have handled that ox myself!”

      
Her hands were fisted at her sides, her breasts heaving with the exertion of excoriating him, and her face was flushed with fury. She was utterly magnificent. Jason looked at her in consternation, alternately angry that she would be so ungrateful, and bemused because he found her so attractive. “You could have handled him, could you? Ah yes, how foolish of me not to have realized. What I mistook for brutish pawing was really a quaint form of British cowering, by Jove!”

      
She stepped closer to him, her eyes still blazing. “Don't mock me, you—you, oh!” she gasped suddenly, doubling over and starting to fall to the stable floor.

      
Had the hellion fainted? It would certainly not be in character for the Rachel Fairchild he knew.
She must have been hurt in the struggle
, he thought as he bent down to catch her in his arms. Then he froze.

      
“Now, Sir Jason the Bold, Rescuer of Damsels, I would advise you to straighten up very slowly,” she purred, holding a great fistful of his hair with one hand.

      
Jason looked down to where her other hand held a small, wickedly sharp stiletto to his throat. When he did not move quickly enough, she applied a bit of pressure, and a tiny bead of blood rolled down his neck.

Chapter Nine

      
Jason did as she ordered.

      
“I shall talk. You will listen.”

      
Although his eyes blazed back at her, he remained silent.

      
“Good, you possess a few shreds of common sense,” she said, releasing her tight grip on his hair but keeping the dagger to his throat. “I do not require rescuing. Not today, not ever. I had my own ‘fight instructor,’ a canny old groom who used to be a Whitechapel cutpurse before my mother gave him respectable work in an attempt to reform him.

      
“But that is neither here nor there. The plain fact is that your precipitous method of handling this stupid affair has just destroyed any hope we had for you and Fox to slip away to Bristol. After this buffoonery, the marquess will see that he's guarded by someone significantly more adept than yon ox.”

      
As she slipped the knife back into her boot, Jason seethed. “Might I suggest that ‘yon ox’ here would not have accosted you in the first place if you dressed the part of lady of the manor instead of stable hand?”

      
“Leave it to a marplot such as you to trowel on insult after slopping on injury,” she snapped, angered as much by his low opinion of her as by the ruination of their scheme.

      
“Speaking of injury, Countess, that ox would not have given a fig for your fainting spell. Tricks like that only work on men who care about women.”

      
She stilled for a moment; then all her indignation evaporated. “All right, Jason, I confess you are right. I was careless, and once he seized me with those great tree-trunk arms, I most probably would have had a difficult time reaching my knife.”

      
A crooked grin spread over his face. “You do keep a man off balance, Countess. I give you that.”

      
As he smiled at her, her heart turned over. “I've nicked you. Damn my temper!” Without realizing what she was doing, Rachel reached up to his neck where a bead of blood trickled toward his shirt collar. She blotted it with her finger, then sucked on the fingertip as she stared into his eyes.

      
Jason groaned and pulled her into his arms, kissing her with a hunger he was unable to hide. Rachel returned the heated kiss, opening her lips to his questing tongue, letting her own tongue dart inside his mouth and taste of him. Soon she, too, was moaning low in her throat as their bodies fused together. This kissing business was getting easier and more pleasurable with practice. In fact, there was nothing she would love half so much as continuing it; but Bradley chose that moment to loose a faint groan of his own, one decidedly not from passion.

      
Rachel and Jason broke apart, breathless and dazed by the sudden return to grim reality.
What was I thinking?
she castigated herself, unable to meet his burning blue eyes.

      
Jason considered what he had just done. Damn it all to hell, she had bewitched him. What else could account for his grabbing her and kissing her right in the middle of a stable filled with his grandfather's men? He stepped away from her and checked on Bradley, who had lapsed once again into full unconsciousness. When he turned back to her, Rachel had composed herself as well.

      
Ignoring what had just passed between them, he said, “Now 'tis my turn to confess, Rachel. You're right about my blunder. The marquess will never let Fox return here once he learns what I did to Mace. He'll be watching me like a falcon searching for field mice.” He cursed, combing his fingers through his hair as he paced beside Mace's still form. “We could take Fox and head for Bristol right now.”

      
Rachel swallowed the hollow ache welling up deep inside her and replied matter-of-factly, “We cannot. The ship on which I booked passage for you is in route to Dublin and not scheduled to return for weeks.”

      
“I was afraid of something like that,” he replied glumly. The date of the wedding was drawing uncomfortably close.

      
“I shall simply have to come up with an alternate plan,” she said.

      
“Well, until you do, let us revive poor Bradley so he can help me throw Mace Bings on a wagon and send him as far from here as possible.”

* * * *

      
As Rachel rode about the fields later that day, she mulled over the change in their plans. It would be impossible to wrest Fox from the old marquess' clutches as things stood. Her father had just received a note that morning from Cargrave announcing his safe arrival at Falconridge. The Mountjoys' ball was tonight. As soon as Bradley and his young charge returned to Jason's manor house, the riding instructor would be duty bound to inform his employer that Jason had easily bested him and the boxer.

      
What else could she do to prevent the marriage from taking place?

      
Niggling at the back of her mind was an alternate possibility, one so shocking that Rachel had been loath to consider it…until now. She preferred to remain unwed. Failing that, she required a husband whom she could control. A man who was the polar opposite of Jason Beaumont.

      
And yet, she could not deny the intense attraction she felt toward the arrogant Yankee earl. He was just as obviously attracted to her. If not for being blackmailed into marriage, he would have tried to bed her, she was certain. Unfortunately, she was equally certain that once he accomplished the seduction, he would move on to his next conquest without giving her another thought. Rachel realized that his side of their physical attraction was just that—purely physical. But what did she feel?

      
“Damnably confused,” she muttered in reply to her own question. For all his faults, Jason could be trusted to keep his word if he gave it. He was not the boorish lout she had first believed him to be. Besides being strikingly handsome, witty, and charming when he chose to be, the earl possessed deeper qualities. He was loyal to his friends, for whom he had sacrificed the seafaring life he loved. He was devoted to a half-caste orphan, caring for Fox as if the boy were his own brother. He had even been willing to honor his bargain with the duplicitous marquess if the issue of their marriage could be resolved.

      
One way to resolve it was…to go through with it. There, she had admitted the idea to herself. “I must be taking leave of my senses.” She patted Reddy absently, deep in thought about her undeniable attraction to Jason. What if they could reach some accommodation? She turned the thought over and over as she rode aimlessly through the fields, waving absently to her tenants, totally unaware of the condition of the crops she was supposedly inspecting.

      
If they did wed, his grandfather would believe he had won. He would relax his guard over Fox and it would be easy for them to spirit the boy away. Jason could take him back to America, leaving her behind. She would be free of her father's endless matchmaking and separated from her husband by an ocean. She could live her life as she chose, and he would enjoy the same freedom.

      
There were many complications to this daring idea, not the least of which was mustering the courage to suggest it to Jason. It was likely he would laugh in her face if she did so. Still, the thought would not leave her. So many problems would be solved. She did not let herself consider how many others would be created.

* * * *

      
Fox patted little Chief as his horse ate an apple from his hand. “You deserve a fine reward after such a great adventure,” he said, recalling the thrill of sailing over several low hedge rows during the early-morning ride he and Jason had taken under Bradley's watchful eye. Both adults had been exceedingly cautious about letting him jump the gelding after his spill the day before, but he had cajoled them until Jason agreed.