Kitabı oku: «The Major Meets His Match»

Chapter One

Lady Harriet Inskip tilted back her head and breathed in deeply. She could still smell soot, but at least this early in the day it wasn’t completely blotting out the more wholesome odours of dew-damp grass and leather and horse. It didn’t matter that it was still barely light enough to see the trees and flowers, or the curve of the Serpentine. She hadn’t come here to admire the decorous landscape, after all.

She leaned forward and patted her horse’s neck.

‘Come on, Shadow, let’s have a good gallop, shall we? While there’s nobody to tell us we can’t.’

Shadow snorted and pawed at the gravel path to indicate she was just as eager for exercise as her mistress. And then, with just the slightest tap of Harriet’s heel against Shadow’s flank, they were off.

For a few glorious minutes they flew through the dappled dawn, both revelling in Shadow’s power and vitality. For those few minutes Harriet was free. Free as any wild creature that lived purely by instinct. Unhindered by the fetters with which society restricted the movements of young ladies.

But then her peaceful communion with nature was shattered by a sound that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and Shadow to falter mid-stride. It was the neigh of another horse. From beyond a stand of chestnut trees. A neigh so high pitched in outrage, it was almost a scream.

Harriet slowed Shadow to a canter. ‘Easy, girl,’ she murmured as her mount twitched her ears and rolled her eyes. But Shadow kept fidgeting nervously. And Harriet could hardly blame her when she reared up at the precise moment a black stallion burst from the cover of the trees as though it had been shot from a cannon.

At first she thought the black horse was a riderless runaway. But as it came closer, she could see a dark shape huddled on its back and a pair of legs flailing along its flanks.

‘What an idiot,’ she muttered to herself. For the man clinging to the stallion had not put a saddle on it. Perhaps there hadn’t been time. Perhaps he was attempting to steal the magnificent, and no doubt very expensive, animal. The horse certainly looked as if it wanted nothing more than to dislodge the impertinent human who’d had the temerity to ride him without following the proper conventions first. The stallion had just galloped through the trees as if it had been an attempt to scrape the interloper from his back, to judge from the way he began to buck and kick the moment he got out into the open.

‘The idiot,’ said Harriet again, this time a bit louder, as she saw that the runaway stallion was now heading straight for the Cumberland Gate. There wasn’t much traffic on the roads at this time of day, but if that horse, and the idiot on board, got out into the streets, who knew what damage they might inflict on innocent passers-by?

‘Come on, Shadow,’ she said, tapping her mare on the flank with her riding crop. ‘We’re going to have to head off those two before they get into real trouble.’ Shadow didn’t need much prompting. She loved racing. However, rather than attempt to pull alongside the snorting, furious stallion, Harriet guided Shadow into a course that would take them across his current path. For one thing, even if they could catch up with the runaway horse, any attempt to snatch at the reins to try to bring him to a halt was bound to end in disaster. Though Harriet took pride in her own skills in the saddle, she couldn’t imagine being able to lean over far enough to grab the reins without being unseated. Not whilst mounted side-saddle as she was. In fact, only a trained acrobat would be able to accomplish such a feat with any degree of confidence.

For another thing, she knew that no horse would run directly into another, not unless it was completely maddened with terror. And the black stallion, though furious, did not look to be in that state.

Just as she’d hoped, after only a few yards, the stallion did indeed notice their approach and veered off to the left.

It was just a shame for its rider that it did so rather abruptly, because the man, who’d clung on through all the stallion’s attempts to dislodge him thus far, shot over its shoulder and landed with a sickening thump on the grass.

Harriet briefly wondered whether she ought to go to the rider’s aid. But the man was lying crumpled like a bundle of washing, so there probably wasn’t much she could do for him. She could, however, prevent the magnificent stallion from injuring itself or others, if she could only prevent it from reaching the Gate. To that end, she repeated her manoeuvre, pulling sharply to the left as though about to cut across the stallion’s path. Once again, the stallion took evasive action. What was more, since it wasn’t anywhere near as angry now that it had unseated its hapless rider, it didn’t appear to feel the need to gallop flat out. By dint of continually urging it to veer left, Harriet made the stallion go round in a large, but ever-decreasing circle, with her on the outside. By the time they’d returned to the spot where the man still lay motionless, the stallion had slowed to a brisk trot. It curvetted past him, as though doing a little victory dance, shivered as though being attacked by a swarm of flies and then came to a complete standstill, snorting out clouds of steam.

Harriet dismounted, threw her reins over the nearest shrub and slowly approached the sweating, shivering, snorting stallion, crooning the kind of nonsense words that horses the country over always responded to, when spoken in a confident yet soothing tone. The beast tossed his head in a last act of defiance before permitting her to take its trailing reins.

‘There, there,’ she said, looping them over the same shrub which served as a tether for Shadow. ‘You’re safe now.’ After tossing his head and snorting again for good measure, the stallion appeared to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Only once she was pretty sure the stallion wouldn’t attempt to bolt again did Harriet turn to the man.

He was still lying spread out face down on the grass.

Harriet’s heart lurched in a way it hadn’t when she’d gone after the runaway horse. Horses she could deal with. She spent more time in the stables than anywhere else. People, especially injured people, were another kettle of fish.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t just leave him lying there. So she squared her shoulders, looped her train over her arm and walked over to where he lay.

Utterly still.

What did one do for a man who’d been tossed from his horse? A man who might have a broken neck?

Two answers sprang to mind, spoken in two very diverse voices. The first was that of her aunt, Lady Tarbrook.

‘Go and fetch help,’ it said plaintively, raising a vinaigrette to its nose. ‘Ladies do not kneel down on wet grass and touch persons to whom they have not been introduced.’

She gave a mental snort. According to Lady Tarbrook, Harriet shouldn’t be out here at all. Since she’d come to London, Harriet had learned there were hundreds, nay, thousands of things she ought never to do. If Lady Tarbrook had her way, Harriet would do nothing but sit on a sofa doing embroidery or reading fashion magazines all day.

The second voice, coming swiftly after, sounded very much like that of her mother. ‘Observe him more closely,’ it said, merely glancing up from the latest scientific journal, ‘and find out exactly what his injuries are.’

Which was the sensible thing to do. Then she could go and fetch help, if the man needed it. And what was more, she’d be able to say something to the point about him, rather than voice vague conjectures.

She ran her eyes over him swiftly as she knelt beside him. None of his limbs looked obviously broken. Nor was there any blood that she could see. If she hadn’t seen him take a tumble, she might have thought he’d just decided to take a nap there, so relaxed did his body look. His face, at least the part of it that wasn’t pressed into the grass, also looked as though he were asleep, rather than unconscious. There was even a slight smile playing about his lips.

She cleared her throat, and then, when he didn’t stir, reached out one gloved hand and shook his shoulder gently.

That elicited a mumbled protest.

Encouraged, she shook him again, a bit harder. And his eyes flew open. Eyes of a startlingly deep blue. With deep lines darting from the outer corners, as though he laughed often. Or screwed his eyes up against the sun, perhaps, because, now she came to think of it, the skin of his face was noticeably tanned. Unlike most of the men to whom she was being introduced, of late. He wasn’t handsome, in the rather soft way eligible Town-dwellers seemed to be, either. His face was a bit too square and his chin rather too forceful to fit the accepted patrician mould. And yet somehow it was a very attractive face all the same.

And then he smiled at her. As though he recognised her and was pleased to see her. Genuinely pleased. Which puzzled her. As did the funny little jolt that speared her stomach, making her heart lurch.

‘I have died and gone to heaven,’ he said, wreathing her in sweet fumes which she recognised as emanating, originally, from a brandy bottle.

She recoiled. But not fast enough. Oh, lord, in spite of appearing extremely foxed, he still managed to get his arms round her and tug her down so she lay sprawled half over him. She then only had time to gasp in shock before he got one hand round the back of her head and pulled her face down to his. At which point he kissed her.

Very masterfully.

Even though Harriet had never been kissed before and was shocked that this drunkard was the first man to want to do any such thing, she suspected he must have a lot of experience. Because instead of feeling disgusted, the sensations shooting through her entire body were rather intriguing. Which she was certain ought not to be the case.

‘Open your mouth, sweetheart,’ the man said, breaking the spell he’d woven round her.

Naturally, she pressed her lips firmly together and shook her head, remembering, all of a sudden, that she ought to be struggling.

Then he chuckled. And started rolling, as if to reverse their positions. Which changed everything. Allowing curiosity to hold her in place while an attractive man obliged her to taste his lips was one thing. Letting him pin her to the ground and render her powerless was quite another.

So she did what she should have done in the first place. She wriggled her right arm as free as she could and struck at him with her riding crop. Because he was holding her so close to him, it glanced harmlessly off the thick thatch of light brown curls protecting the back of his head. But she had at least succeeded in surprising him.

‘Let go of me, you beast,’ she said, interjecting as much affront in her voice as she could. And began to struggle.

To her chagrin, though he looked rather surprised by her demand, he let go of her at once. Even so, it was no easy matter to wriggle off him, hampered as she was by the train of her riding habit, which had become tangled round her legs.

‘Ooohh...’ he sighed. ‘That feels good.’ He half closed his eyes and sort of undulated under her. Indicating that all her frantic efforts to get up were only having a very basic effect on his body.

‘You...you beast,’ she said, swiping at him with her crop again.

He winced and rubbed at his arm where she’d managed to get in a decent hit before overbalancing and landing flat on his chest again.

‘I don’t enjoy those sorts of games,’ he protested. ‘I’d much rather we just kissed a bit more and then—’

She shoved her hands hard against his chest, using his rock-solid body as leverage so she could get to her hands and knees.

‘Then nothing,’ she said, shuffling back a bit before her trailing riding habit became so tangled she had to roll half over and sit on it. ‘You clearly aren’t injured after your fall from your horse, though you deserve,’ she said, kicking and plucking at her skirts until she got her legs free, ‘to have your neck broken.’

‘I say, that’s rather harsh,’ he objected, propping himself up on one elbow and watching her struggles sleepily.

‘No, it isn’t. You are drunk. And you were trying to ride the kind of horse that would be a handful for any man, sober. What were you thinking? You could have injured him!’

‘No, I couldn’t. I can ride any horse, drunk or sober—’

‘Well, clearly you can’t, or he wouldn’t have bolted and you wouldn’t be lying here—’

‘Lucifer wouldn’t have thrown me if you hadn’t dashed across in front of us and startled him.’

‘No, he would have carried you on to a public highway and ridden down some hapless milkmaid instead. And you would definitely have broken your neck if he’d thrown you on the cobbles.’

‘I might have known,’ he said with a plaintive sigh, ‘that you were too good to be true. You might look like an angel and kiss like a siren, and have a fine pair of legs, but you have the disposition of a harpy.’

She gasped. Not at the insult, so much, but at the fact that he was gazing admiringly at her legs while saying it. Making her aware that far too much of them was on show.

‘Well, you’re an oaf. A drunken oaf at that!’ She finally managed to untangle her legs and get to her feet just as three more men came staggering into view.

‘Good God, just look at that,’ said the first of the trio to reach them, a slender, well-dressed man with cold grey eyes and a cruel mouth. ‘Even lying flat on his back in the middle of nowhere, Ulysses can find entertainment to round off the evening.’

Since the man with the cruel mouth was looking at her as though she was about to become his entertainment, Harriet’s blood ran cold.

‘I have no intention of being anyone’s entertainment,’ she protested, inching towards Shadow, though how on earth she was to mount up and escape, she had no idea. ‘I only came over here to see if I could help.’

‘You can certainly help settle the b-bet,’ said the second young man to arrive, flicking his long, rather greasy fringe out of his eyes. ‘Did he reach the C-Cumberland Gate b-before Lucifer unseated him?’

‘It was a wager?’ She rounded on the one they’d referred to as Ulysses, the one who was still half-reclining, propped up on one arm, watching them all with a crooked grin on his face. ‘You risked injuring that magnificent beast for the sake of a wager?’

‘The only risk was to his own fool neck,’ said the man with the cold eyes. ‘Lucifer can take care of himself,’ he said, going across to the stallion and patting his neck proudly. From the way the stallion lowered his head and butted his chest, it was clear he was Lucifer’s master.

Harriet stooped to gather her train over one arm, her heart hammering. At no point had she felt afraid of the man they called Ulysses, even when he’d been trying to roll her over on to her back. There was something about his square, good-natured face that put her at ease. Or perhaps it had been that twinkle in his eyes.

But the way the one with the cruel mouth was looking at her was a different matter. There was something...dark about him. Predatory. Even if he was fond of his horse and the horse clearly adored him in return, that didn’t make him a decent man.

He then confirmed all her suspicions about his nature by turning to her with a mocking smile on his face. ‘It is hardly fair of you to reward Ulysses with a kiss,’ he said, taking a purposeful step closer, ‘when it is I who won the wager.’

She lashed out with her riding crop and would have caught him across his face had he not flinched out of her way with a dexterity that both amazed and alarmed her. Even in a state of inebriation, this man could still pose a very real threat to a lone female.

Keeping her eyes on him, she inched sideways to where she’d tethered Shadow. And collided with what felt like a brick wall.

‘Oof!’ said the wall, which turned out to be the third of Ulysses’s companions, a veritable giant of a man.

‘You got off lightly,’ remarked Mr Cold-Eyes to the giant, who was rubbing his mid-section ruefully. ‘She made a deliberate attempt to injure me.’

‘That’s prob’ly ’cos you’re fright’ning her,’ slurred the giant. ‘Clearly not a lightskirt.’

‘Then what is she doing in the park, at this hour, kissing stray men she finds lying about the place?’ Cold-Eyes gave her a look of such derision it sent a flicker of shame coiling through her insides.

‘She couldn’t resist me,’ said Ulysses, grinning at her.

‘She d-don’t seem to like you, th-though, Zeus,’ said the one with the greasy, floppy fringe.

‘Archie, you wound me,’ said Zeus, as she got her fingers, finally, on Shadow’s reins. Though how on earth she was to mount up, she couldn’t think. There was no mounting block. No groom to help her reach the stirrup.

Just as she’d resigned herself to walking home leading her mount, she felt a pair of hands fasten round her waist. On a reflex, she lashed out at her would-be assailant, catching him on the crown of his head.

‘Ouch,’ said the drunken giant of a man, as he launched her up and on to Shadow’s saddle. ‘There was no call for that.’ He backed away, rubbing his head with a puzzled air.

No, there hadn’t been any call for it. But how could she have guessed the giant had only been intending to help her?

‘Then I beg your pardon,’ she said through gritted teeth as she fumbled her foot into the stirrup.

‘As for the rest of you,’ she said as she got her knee over the pommel and adjusted her skirts, ‘you ought...all of you...to be ashamed of yourselves.’

She did her best to toss her head as though she held them all in disdain. As though her heart wasn’t hammering like a wild, frightened bird within the bars of her rib cage. To ride off with dignity, rather than hammering her heels into Shadow’s flank, and urging her mare to head for home at a full gallop.

She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.